The Puffer Forum

Hi all,

Sorry for posting a new topic, I'm sure there has been lots, but I wanted to attach a pic to see if anyone can help.
My sap has been refusing food for about 2 weeks now. At first he totally ignored any food going in, but for the past 2 days he seems slightly interested, swimming up as if about to take it but swimming away. I read somewhere a post about a lock jaw and didn't know if it could be a similar thing. (It was a very very old post). In this post it mentioned the possibility of regional variations in puffers as the one being discussed looked very different. I'm wondering if this is possible as he is much much darker than his tank mates and seems to have a slightly different shaped jaw (although I don't know if this is just because he is so skinny)
At first I thought it could be his teeth and sedated him, but on closer inspection, these were fine. I'm not sure if they in fact need doing now but he looks too weak to be able to survive this.
I've had him about 4 months now, and he has always been smaller than the other two. The other two have also slowed down in their eating... but still look happy and healthy and I'm thinking their teeth could do with a trim. I feed them bloodworms and have recently tried numerous other foods... Mysis, Artemia, shrimp, clams, snails... none of the puffers seem very interested.
Have checked the levels and everything is fine and tried a couple of starvation days which didn't help.
Please help! I'm based in the UK and have looked at different medicines mentioned, including sedation medicines, but have been unable to source them here...
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Tammy

Have you tried snails, live black/bloodworms?

Could you give us tank size, temperature, filtration, normal foods and schedule, all inhabitants, water parameters, water change schedule. We can see you are concerned - but you haven't given us any information on the tank and fish...

Yes, please answer ALL the Qs above, in red.

Umm okay...

125l,180x40x50cm, temp 25-26c (77-78f) the filter is an Aquamanta EFX1000, frozen bloodworm (up until a week ago where I tried Mysis and Artemia), this was one cube a day and would be completely gone within a minute or two, now this takes a good 10mins or so to disappear. 3 saps, 5 tiger barbs, 1 kribensis cichlid, and a kuhli loach and a small butterfly pleco..Ammonia and nitrates zero and about 25% a little more sometimes every other week. The aquariums been set up since march (2013)...to set up I did water changes and added bacteria to the filter. I originally had mollies and the pleco in there but when the mollies all died, I introduced the puffers, then the barbs.

All other fish seem happy..I can't seem to upload a picture as it says they are too big.

Haven't tried lives ones yet, as they always seemed to love frozen, but could try this next.. The snails they just seem to ignore which is slightly frustrating.

Thanks,
Tammy

Sorry, but your tank is, to me at least, massively overstocked and mis-stocked. That tank is about 33 US gallons and at that too small for 3 SAPs alone IME, much less with the other fish housed there . It also needs more and larger water changes - 50% weekly is standard for puffers. Those fish together are far from a "community IME, even without knowing the identity of the Cichlid.

The food offered is too limited and boring for the fish. If the food is (properly) thawed outside the tank, there is little or no crunch in the SAPs diet, which they absolutely require. SAPs have the highest requirement for crunch in their diet of any of the puffers which I have kept. Mine get at least 95% of their food in the form of home-reared ramshorn and common pond snails. Are their incisors overgrown? That is the commonest cause of failure to eat in properly kept SAPs.

There are suggestions for keeping SAPs in the Library and Pufferpedia here, along with hints on keeping and rearing snails for puffer food.

Frankly, I don't see much chance for the SAPs survival in that tank. Puffer generally are pretty poor "community" or mixed tank fish.

FWIW, HTH

ug.php/v/PufferPedia/Freshwater/C_Asellus/
library/puffers-in-focus/sap/

They won't eat other foods offered... previously I've put mussels, prawn and shrimp and they go nowehere near it and the snails just stayed in the tank.

No the teeth are fine...

I'll up the water changes, but if all levels are good and all the other fish happy will this not just increase risk of changing the levels in each change?

Likely stress, I have had a devil of a time with mine. These guys do not belong in a tank with any other fish. They just eat the meaty foods offered to other fish and leave the crunchy stuff needed to avoid dental issues. They are also skittish IMO, if there is anything as big as them in the tank they would rather just swim around than risk confrontation over food. They may be gentle enough to live with other fish but we would be fooling ourselves if we said we could meet their needs in a mixed tank. This shy species will remain skittish until ample swimming room and plenty of cover is provided, I personally ( after keeping and experimenting) believe that a tank short of 100g long not tall is not suitable to accommodate the swimming room needed for a sap or a group of saps. People have and do keep them in smaller tanks, with relative success but does that mean the fish are happy? I would leave that open to debate, mine just seemed to stressed for me to handle, swimming up and down left to right, it did my head in.