The Puffer Forum

I'm not sure how to use this stuff, but I am so interested in hearing what you guys think happened to me ( and 2 puffers) that I'm willing to risk your wrath. Ok, yesterday I bought 2 cute colomesus asellus puffer babies . The fish guy told me that they did ok in community aquariums, and sure enough, there they were, in a tank with some other fish. I came home, put them in with my 3 1/2 yr old golden severum and 1 hour later he was paralyzed, nose down in the gravel. When I moved him around, he would begin breathing and then quit. His gills were barely moving. The puffers bore no marks of having been eaten or damaged in any way. I was told that to be poisoned, he would have had to ingest one. I took the severum to the fish store where he was manually moved through the water and forced to move for around 15 minutes. The deoxygenated blood visisble through his arm fins pinked up slightly and he was then left to rest. He is fine now, back home, alone once again, and the puffers have been returned . Again, he was clearly suffering from paralysis. No eye movement, no mouth movement, barely breathing. What happened?? How did he get affected by the puffer toxin? Help me figure this out. Lauren Levy

Ok, who ever told you he was poisoned was right about one thing, the puffer hs to have been injested or been bitten (like a chunk.) But where you were mis informed was that the severum was poisoned. My likely guess was that the puffers gave him a scare more often then not a few times. They probably bit him a few times and really stressed him out. But no poison.

Since they are wrong that puffers do well in community aquariums, why should you believe them when they say that your fish was poisoned by the puffers? Or why would they tell you the fish were okay in community if they release poison? Can you feel your leg being pulled?

Puffers, even the gentler ones such as SAPs are high risk in community tanks. FW puffers do carry more toxin in their skin than BW/SW puffers, but you should have been able to tell if the Sevrum tried to eat one. And it likely would not have recovered so quickly from a dose of puffer toxin.

Did you add the store water to your tank?

Well, that is why this whole thing has been such a mystery. I was told that they weren't poisonous and that they were great community fish. Could the severum have been so scared that he quit breathing?

Unlikely.

Probably got attacked by the puffs.

What are your water params?

I just use the RO water from the store and I had just changed the water 20% before this occurred.

The actual values would be handy to know.

My guess would be the puffers attacked and he paniced and ran into the glass wall, I've seen that happen before where a fish hits the glass so hard they seem to be paralyzed for a while, but they come back eventually. Frogs too.. I used to know some kids when I was a kid, they'd kit frogs as hard as they could with a stick when they saw one. It would float belly up, tongue hanging out and look dead. They'd toss it in a bucket and a while later it would be hopping around like nothing happened. I'm definately not condoning the behavior, but it could be an explaination.

You know, that is a possibility. Thanks, Myaj !

do fish bruise?

water params ?

If you have soft tissue, you bruise - but it may or may not show externally.