The Puffer Forum

Hello!
My 3months old mbu puffer is totally not well and Ive tried quite a few options and dont know what to do now!

I got him 3 months ago, he was fine, was active but wasn't eating the food really well(i was feeding him frozen clams without shells). Instead he eat all the small fish I had in my aquarium, around 10 of them but he was totally fine and active.

After a while he still wasn't eating well the clams and became very skinny, i bought him some live shrimp and he was chasing all of them and eat all, was very happy and active.

And he stopped eating clams again, I didn't know what to do, Ive tried wax worms, fish,prawns,bloodworms, he was coming, biting once and leaving. I think he has problems with teeth cause they look quite long and he was biting snails and stones!!!

Ive put some more snails but he was only biting them and not eating.
And Ive noticed white spots on him a week ago, I bought special puffer acceptable medicine and added it, after 3 days the spots dissapeared.
2 days ago I decided to buy live shrimp again, cause he was too skinny and half of the day just lying on the bottom of the aquarium and looking very tired. He wasn't eating any other food I was trying to feed.
He immediately started to chase them and eat all.
The next day something happened and he started to move really really strange, and floating vertically his tail up on the bottom! Moving quite awkwardly. I had an idea maybe because of his grown teeth he couldn't process the shrimp and got them live inside the stomach and they damaged him????

Now he flows like this on the bottom of the tank all day. He looks around with his eyes and they are not blurry, his fins are fine too and he is not breathing hard. Im doing water changes, added a little bit of malafix too.
Aquarium is 200litres, Ive just done API NH3/NH4 test, and the colour shows that its 0ppm-0.20 (mg/L) so I dont think its the problem with water Im also doing water changes now (around 10% a day from yesterday)

Please help me I have no idea how to help him and what happened.
I dont want him to die, Ive tried everything! Please!

Wow, that poor fellow is extremely emaciated. At this point, unless you are up to force-feeding, I'd put him out of his misery by overdosing him with clove oil.

is there anything else I can do??? He had around 8 ghost shrimp 2 days ago and had poo, but I daunt know what to do now? is this really the end? anything ??

Unfortunately, ghost shrimp are a very poor diet--almost 0 nutritional value, unless they are gut-loaded with food. Just a shell & water, mostly. He's been starving by eating that. You could try live earthworms but at this point, I don't think he's got the energy to eat.

how can I make him eat??? put more shrimp?? worm are arriving tomorrow!!

If he'll still eat shrimp gut-load them with something nutritious like flakes soaked in fish vitamins.

what kind of food to force-feed? any tips/recommendations?