The Puffer Forum

My f8 puffer has Ich and i was wondering if this would be a good way to treat the problem. I have set up a "hospital tank" (a 30g plastic container) which I would like to move my puffer into out of his normal aquarium. I figured I would be able to treat him in the hospital tank by increasing the heat and salt content and if need be by adding medicine. Would this be the better choice since I don't want to harm any of the good bacteria in my main tank and have read that one normally wouldn't want to add medicine to the main tank anyway. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks!

First of all, if you remove the puffer from the other tank, you have to keep feeding the bacteria to keep it alive or your tank will recycle.

Usually you shouldn't need meds to treat ich, raising the temp and salt content should be enough. But if you move the fish and treat it in a quarentine tank, make sure you leave the display tank empty of all fish for at least 4 weeks, so the parasite can die off from not having any host. Otherwise, when you put the fish back in, the parasite will just latch on again.

So should I leave the puffer in his main tank then??? And if not, how do I keep feeding my bacteria???

More info please:
What size tank is he in?
Any tank mates?
What's the SG now?
Are you sure it's ich & not just spines?

Oh sorry. He's in a 28 gallon bow front without any tank mates and SG at 1.008. He was at 1.005 and once I thought it was ich I upped it. I'm not quite sure what you mean by spines?

All puffers have spines. F8's spines look like tiny white dots & are often misdiagnosed as ich. Are there spots on the fins too?

There's a white spot on the dorsal(?) fin and the one opposite that on the bottom fin... on the dorsal fin there seems to be a little white filament/line looking thing attached to the white spot. But other than that I haven't seen any other white spots.

Oh and these spots have only developed in the last week.... If that helps any.

I'd raise the temp a bit & add Melafix for now. Make sure the water is pristine (50% weekly water changes cleaning the gravel too). If he develops more spots (looks like salt), I'd up the temp to 86 & do 50% water changes every other day.

Ok I'll try that then. Thanks for your help!