The Puffer Forum

Help! My porcupine puffer has had fin rot for about 2 weeks now. Also, his left eye has a large amount of blood in it and it also has a bit of popeye. The puffer can't see out of that eye. pH: 8.0 Ammonia: 0 Nitrites: 0 Nitrates: 0 Salinity: 1.023 The tank is a 75 gallon with the porcupine puffer inside along with a striped squirrelfish, a bluefin damsel, and a snowflake moray. He is the dominant fish in the tank, and the fish never bully or bite him. I feed him 1 or 2 small clams every other day and change 5 gallons of water every week. In the last week, I have done some cleaning. While cleaning, I noticed small white sea cucumber things in the overflow, and I cleaned them out of the tank. Does anybody have an idea of what they are? Also, I have added half the recommended dose of Melafix every day for 7 days to try to cure his fin rot. It hasn't really helped. My aquarium has been set up for 2 years, and I cycled it for 1 month. Also, my puffer now swims at a slight angle with the bloody eye closer to the surface. Are there any medicines other than Melafix that can help fin rot and/or popeye?

If you're having that many bacterial issues with your puffer, there's something wrong with your water parameters. With all those fish in there, you should be showing some nitrate. Your tank is way overstocked. Are those fish mature size? Never dose 1/2 of what a manufacturer recommends--it can make the bacteria immune to the product.

I would agree, for a tank that heavily stocked you are probably not getting accurate nitrate readings. Water changes (watch your salinity closely so you don't crash the tank), full doses of melafix and start thinking about a larger tank or homes for some of those fish.. a 75 isn't nearly big enough for all of them.

Fin rot is almost always due to poor water quality.. they get a scrape and instead of healing cleanly it gets all nasty due to the water quality. So no matter what your test readings, I would work on getting that water nice and clean with a series of water changes, start smaller since you've only been doing 5 gallons at a time, but do increasingly large ones over the next few days.