The Puffer Forum

Well one of my gsps, has lived happily for the past 6 months, in good housing; pmms are good, hiding spots, enough space and food. Over the past few days her belly has been more sunken than usual (it is normally a little round), I dewormed her about a week ago. So now I have put the dewormer in again and also soaked her food in it, I fed her last night and twice this morning as when I woke up after a few hours her belly was dangerously slim. No other signs of illness though, she's happy and buzzing about as normal, being more ferocious than ever with her food.

Keep treating for IPs. Use Jungle Clear fizz tabs. Soak the food, as you have been.

What are you feeding her?

Sick puffers make me

Also if co-housed with another puffer is this one getting a sufficient amount of food to begin with?

Thanks guys, last night she was gasping at the surface, sticking her top lip out of the water, her chin had gone black and the other gsp's breathing had increased too. I got them out into new water while I done a full pwc even though my pmms were good, now they're perfect. It's happened again tonight, the really rapid breathing. She was fine all day. I feed them; ramshorns once a month for their teeth, I know it should be around once a week but I feed them shelled clams which also helps with that every 3-4 days, they also get mussels, trout, whole fish (all of which are frozen). I feed them with a training/feeding stick during feeding times or give them two seperate bits, her belly gets huge and then it just goes back down again.. I have treated her for IPs three times since I got her, once on getting her, twice when the whole sunken belly thing started and now I'm doing it again.

What are your parameters? There should be no good to perfect, it should only be ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate <20.
You should not be removing the fish during water changes.
If your parameters are not holding and you have any ammonia or nitrite, that is likely causing the gasping.

If they're gasping at the surface maybe add more oxygen

I removed them because they were clearly unhappy, gasping, one lying down and not getting up, so I got them into new clean water and they calmed down. Thanks but the ppm's are fine, hence why I used to words good and perfect Tried adding an aerator but that didn't help.

I'm not talking about ppm's. I'm taking about your tank maybe not being cycled. Your tank water should be "clean", as in safe for fish, already cycled 0 ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate <20.
I think you may need to read up on aquarium microbes and the nitrogen cycle.
http://theaquariumwiki.com/Aquarium_Mic ... rification
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article58.html

Yeah it sounds to be as if your tank is not cycled. Can you post your water parameters please? Give us a reading on ammonia,nitrite and nitrate. I'm willing to bet you're showing levels of ammonia and/or nitrite. How often do you do water changes? Sevenyearnight is absolutely right, you should NEVER be taking them out their tank to do a water change. You're putting new water into the tank so I don't see what you've gained by doing that besides stressing the poor fellas out even more.

Also, what size tank are they in? How often do you do water changes?