Dogface puffer sick!!

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
Forum rules
Read this before posting!!

Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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Shandi
Puffer Fry
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 1:05 am
Location (country): US

Dogface puffer sick!!

Post by Shandi »

For past few weeks my dogface puffer has been laying on bottom of tank. He got to wear I wasn’t seeing him eat but also noticed him picking at rocks so I thought maybe he was doing that or eating my cleanup crew. 75 gallon and only tank mate is zebra eel. I have been doing water changes to reduce nitrates 40ppm without much help over past few weeks. I cleaned out Refugio of heavy waste and detritus a few weeks ago also. Tonight I did 50% water change. I feel like he is super skinny and not using his tail very much as he also doesn’t swim much just kind of stays at bottom on sand bed. I did metroplex and finished last week but didn’t notice a difference. Do you think he has an illness or just water parameters became severe issue? The eel has no issues and I don’t have any algae. Ammonia and nitrite 0.
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Pufferpunk
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Posts: 32755
Joined: Tue May 31, 2005 11:06 am
Gender: Female
My Puffers: Filbert, the 12" T lineatus
Punkster, the 4" red T miurus
Mongo, the 4" A modestus
2 T biocellatus
C valentini
C coranata
C papuan
Also kept:
lorteti
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suvattii
burrfish
T niphobles
Location (country): USA, Greenville, SC
Location: Chicago
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Re: Dogface puffer sick!!

Post by Pufferpunk »

Considering nitrate should be kept <10, it's not great. How much live rock do you have in there?
What does his poop look like?
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
speedjester
Puffer Fry
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2022 8:59 am
Location (country): Florida US

Re: Dogface puffer sick!!

Post by speedjester »

Just want to mention Metroplex will take some fish off feed for a while.
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