The Puffer Forum

so my south american puffers are/have been crawling with velvet (i had thought it was ich till today!) for about 2-3 weeks now and we have been trying to treat it with this med called paracide green for about a week or 2 now. the chemical treatment we have been using though says it is "an excellent broad spectrum remedy used to treat excessive slime formation, external fungal infections, Ich or other white spot disease and other external protozoa and flukes," will it work for velvet or is there any specialized medications i can use? we went to the fish store today and bought some aquarium salt, how much should i add? we are about to do a big water change and want to add in some salt. the one south american puffer who has it really bad looks like the fins that are right next to his gills are stuck to his side and he cant really swim and is just bobbin around mostly at the top of the tank. they are both also red around the gills and the tail, here are a few pics:

oh dear...poor fishie...

mabe use some melafix to soothe the poor little guy's skin???

poor guy....

Here is a thread that discusses velvet and treatment. Check it out:http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/vie ... ght=velvet

im pretty sure thats for marine tanks, mine is a freshwater. my guy is looking worse and worse, his skin is starting to peel even. any help is greatly appreciated, i dont wanna lose him.

My f8's have ich and I have been looking all over the net I found this site it helps you figure out what they have and then has charts on how to treat the different things and it is for puffers. you can’t get through Google you need to type in the address. Good Luck

http://puffernet.tripod.com/pathology.html

I wish there was more I could help with, but I don't have any experience with velvet.

All I can think of would be the regular therapuetic treatments:

Increased temp, water changes, air stone, aquarium salt, melafix and pimafix.

I got rid of it the same way as I do ich.

so i should use the same amount of salt for this as you use with ich? (3 teaspoons/1tblspn per gallon??)

Did you check out the site I left above

yes i did, i went to the store today and saw thatthey had some of the mardel maracide and we bought some, it looks exactly like this:

i have a quick question about it though, it contains Malachite green, and i have heard that this stuff kills beneficial bacteria, is that true? also the store told us we should take out the carbon pad in our filter, i was wondering if i should put it in some tank water and keep it or just replace it? is there a lot of bacteria in there or are they located mostly in another part of the filter? also should i half the dosage, are puffers sensitive to this stuff?

It won't hurt to remove your carbon while you are treating them and the meds will not work if you leave it in. I haven't had trouble with the meds killing my good bacteria in the past when I used it in my community tank I only use them when I think there is no other way. Did you read the part about giving them 1/2 the regular dosage? My f8 are doing better tonight one has been doing better all day one just started picking up tonight and they have had the meds 2 times I'm using quick cure because that’s what I had on hand and it has the malachite green in it to. But I have used the Mardel products before on my other fish and they worked great. Let us know how they get on.

I just went back and read on it and it says that Maracide does not hurt your good bacteria but keeping a check on your water parameters is still a good idea

Disisgustavo -

First off, I am by no means an expert at fish keeping (a beginner at best). I have however used cupramine to treat marine velvet on my porcupine puffer. It worked wonders and saved my puffers life. From the research I did when my puffer got sick, copper is pretty much the way to go to treat velvet. I'm not sure if this is true on freshwater velvet though (I only researched saltwater - and had plenty of help from people on this forum). You might want to consider it though or at least look into it.

With most puffers, these treatments can be dangerous. When I used the cupramine, I kept his doses fairly low - slightly above half the recommended treatment level. My puffer didn't seem to have any problems handling the copper, but he did look really bad after the first 24 hours (worse than when I quarantined him). Fortunately, he started showing signs of improvement within a couple of days and is now fully healed.

Do you have a quarantine tank? I would recommend moving your puffers into quarantine before trying any meds. I would also recommend adding some airstones into the water.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope your puffers get well soon.

Dan

It is also best to QT the fish treated & not use copper in your main tank. Are any other fish affected? An anti-parasitic shouldn't kill off bacteria.

Correction: Maracide can be used effectively with the filter in place. Mardel will confirm this. It should actually say it on the bottle. I have used Maracide for bad cases Ich and Velvet and have had good results.
I have never used this on puffers though because I believe that it may be to harsh on them and cause much stress. I would go with the temperature change and addition of salt. This would be far less stressful and maybe just as effective.
I have not known maracide to hinder or damage the biological filter in any way. I have not documented an instance at work (the LFS) or at home where the water parameters or biological filter has changed.

well i added half the dosage of maricide last night after a huge water change and this morning our worst fear came true when i woke up and noticed the puffer dead poor little guy, and the worst part is i coulda prolly saved him if i started the right kind of treatment earlier hopefully my other guy pulls through, he is not nearly as bad as the other one was and this one has been eating and swimming around and whatnot.