Is my GSP sick?

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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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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smallworm
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Is my GSP sick?

Post by smallworm »

I'm a newbie to Puffers. I just bought a 2 GSP. I've just found one of them (see picture below) has weird dots, they are not white, just like small dots of ashes on him. Also, he often swims ups and down against the tank edges. And doesn't eat much. I feed them with bloodyworms. I'm trying to get some snails, but all LFS I visited don't have feeder snails. So what's wrong with him? The other GSP is live and kicking.


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Hilly
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Post by Hilly »

What are your water parameters, what size tank are they in?
Please read this thread and answer all the questions, it will make it easier for people to help.
http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5

Has he always had these marks or have they appeared since you got him. Is there any display of aggression between the 2 that you've noticed?
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Post by PetPirate »

Very hard to tell for sure from the picture... but they look like bite marks to me.
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JustinPSmith
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Post by JustinPSmith »

Yeah its hard to see but when I kept my GSP together, one of them bite the other on the top of the head and it looked like that. It healed very very quickly though and left almost no scar.
smallworm
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Post by smallworm »

I don't know about the parameters because I don't know how to measure them. I just felt they were cute when I bought them. They are in a 5 gallon tank. The marks weren't there when I bought them. I saw other GSPs at the LFS have those marks. This "sick" gsp seems to be afraid of the other one. He won't go closer to the other one after I drop off the worms in. I tried to isolate him with worms, but didn't eat much.
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Post by jrs24 »

well im not at all one to point fingers i did pretty much the same thing luckily i realized it soon enough to save mine and get them in the right size tank with the right water conditions.
You need to read up on how to take care of them and see if its something your willing to put the effort into doing. In my opinion it's defiantly worth it and its great that you found this place. The people here are SO helpful and they really know what their talking about
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Boxermom
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Post by Boxermom »

Tina

Puffers: Auriglobus silus x1, Tetraodon travancoricus x1, Tetraodon turgidus x1, Tetraodon miurus x1, Tetraodon nigroviridis x2, Tetraodon baileyi x2, Tetraodon lineatus x1, Tetraodon palembangensis x1
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Hilly
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Post by Hilly »

Puffers are territorial and 5 gallon is very small for 2, most likely aggression from the more dominant one towards this one with the marks. To keep 1 you are looking at a tank that is a minimum 30 gallons and for 2 60-75 gallons.

To measure water paramters you can purchase a test kit from LFS, they're relatively cheap and essential.

Here is the article from the library on Green Spotted Puffers.
http://www.thepufferforum.com/articles/ ... togsp.html
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smallworm
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Post by smallworm »

Thanks all of you for the precious info and comments. I'll get a bigger tank and a test kit for my cute gsp.
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strike2
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Post by strike2 »

Yea upgrade def.
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