The Puffer Forum

I am looking for some help with the look of my puffer. On her left side it looks like someone squished her flat. I am not sure if this is the way she is suppose to look because at the fish store the other one that they had looked the same. We have treated her for IP's because I did notices that she was pooping red things. She eats like it's going out of style and is super active. I just don't know if anything else could be wrong with her that I could fix.

Here is the link to the picture : http://imgur.com/grOPYPs
Sorry about the quality. It's the best I can do.

Hello and welcome. Yeah your poor GSP is suffering from both starvation and IP's. It is good that she is eating so keep feeding her but make sure to continue to treat the food with parasite meds. Also make sure the water is at least low brackish as these are NOT freshwater puffers as they are commonly marked as.

Also try feeding your puffer live foods such as snails, earthworms, or even ghost shrimp. To help boost growth and bulk for your puffer you can also soak frozen bloodworms and beefheart in vitamins such as vitachem: http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Enterprises- ... B00025YRIO Pieces of crabmeat and mussel from the grocery store (uncooked) is another great option.

Thanks for the advice. I will continue to treat her, but what is the max time i should treat her for ? I don't want to overdo it. My husband read we should do it for a week, and we have so far treated her for 6 days. Since you say she is starving I'm not gonna give her a fasting day, at least till she fills out a little more.

3-5 days with meds, take 3 days off & treat again, if necessary.

Make sure you continue to treat him even as you no longer notice the symptoms; failure to do so may result in the IP(s) becoming resistant to the medication, thus making them harder to kill.

I'd use the SW Vitachem.

Well I can't seem to find the silly picture I took on the phone (and she has turned out to be very camera shy) but we treated her, and are going to start treating her again today just to be sure, and we started turning her tank more brackish than what we started out at and she is looking so much better! the smashed look to her side is almost gone. We are waiting on the vitachem to come in, but I'm not sure which one my husband got. The only problem I'm having now is all she wants to eat is snails and the freeze dried shrimp. Can't really get her to eat much of anything else. Any suggestions? I don't wanna not feed her, just cause she wants to be picky

I wanted to take a minute and thank all of the helpful replies that I got for this post. I'm having problems finding my new pictures of her but she is like a whole new puffer now. Her water is now brackish and she went through a round of treatment and also got the vitachem today. But it was the FW version. I'm having problems getting her to eat anything but shrimp right now though. She used to eat all kinds of stuff but is now getting picky. Any suggestions would be helpful!