The Puffer Forum

I have four Dwarf Puffers in a 20 gallon tank, very full with decorations and they have lived peacefully together for about a year. I feed all of them brine shrimp, keep snails in the tank for feeding and change the tank twice a week. The levels are all just as normal as they have always been and I medicated for I.P.s regularly.
A few weeks back one of my fishies (Precious) became ill and wouldn't eat, so I began a MetroPlex treatment for her in the tank, I pulled something out of her mouth that looked like a blood worm she didn't chew and after 2 or 3 days she went back to normal. The tank was fine for about a week with normal changes, feeding, etc..
Then one of my other Dwarf Puffers (Beautiful) began showing similar signs, I started another treatment and began hand feeding her as she wouldn't go after anything herself.
Two days ago I woke up to a completely sunken belly, ZERO appetite and she began the strangest swimming pattern. She would only swim "head down, tail up" and wanted nothing more than to hide in decorations with her face in the sand.
She will not touch food no matter what I do, I soaked some peas in garlic, and so me blood worms, and literally touched it to her mouth and she won't even nudge it. She sits on the sand with her fins moving and wont move. Occasionally she lays face down with her tail up. I did a prazipro treatment and started another MetroPlex treatment, with 50% changes a day.
I am running out of ideas to get this little turd to eat. I have had them for a year and don't want to lose one.
Any suggestions? The rest seem perfectly fine so far, I don't have a hospital tank, we breed our own snails, our blood worms and brine shrimp are frozen.

Do you think something came in on the snails? If she's not eating, IDK how you'd treat her for IPs.

Well because she wouldn't eat I just treated the water and used the medication as a bath. I was told on another forum that because they are super sensitive to medication you can usually just treat their water and they should be fine. It has worked a few times before but had I known she was going to get this bad, I would have put her in a container and fed her medicated paste.
And yeah it is always possible for something to have come in on my snails, we generally take less care of them, only changing their tank a few times a month, but we give them vitamins and feed them well. They look ok minus the small white lines some of them have from the calcium. It's just strange though, because she doesn't really eat snails, she mostly eats brine shrimp and nibbles on blood worms, and none of the other ones are showing signs of whatever she has.
I will do a few full changes of the snail tanks and keep trying to feed her. I have some medicine soaked peas and blood worms ready for her as soon as she nibbles anything again.
If she doesn't get better I may have to let her go, her current quality of life has to be miserable, even if she can't feel pain I know fish can experience depression and she is just sleeping all day and getting smaller and smaller.
I'm desperate.

Anyone who tells you to treat the water for IPs in a FW fish is a fool, as FW fish do NOT drink water.

I was told they will absorb it through their bodies because they don't have scales and that they are particularly sensitive to medication because of that.
Is that just flat out not true? There seems to be a lot of BS in various forums and I just want to care for my babies lol.

Flat out NOT TRUE, as fat as treatment for IPs.

Ok, well let's say I was treating with metroplex or prazipro, and I fed them brine shrimp and snails (When they actually eat them). How would you combine the two for a medicated food source, and using what products to do so?
My littlest one will eat nothing but snails. My fattest one will eat nothing but brine shrimp. The dumb one would eat himself if he could figure out how.
The ones who are alive won't take to blood worms and garlic doesn't seem to work (I also heard that wasn't based on evidence anyway).

Jungle Parasite Clear fizzy tabs have both metro/prazi in them.

How do I give it to them? Soak it in their food?

Yes, you can use 1/4 tab in a shot glass with some frozen worms & then drain.