Ok, normally i would feel confident with my ability to diagnose a fish related problem but lately i've been rusty at it. It also involves a fish my girlfriend and i are horribly attached too.
Our humpback puffer Fred has what appears to be a whitish fuzz forming on him, just behind the pectoral fish kinda on the shoulder region. We are trying to get a pic of it but its not showing up well in the digicam.
Normally i'd treat for fungus but i've been fighting the same appearing disease in my guppy tank, which irritatingly enough is right next to Freds tank.
I was at petsmart getting some meds for the guppies when a young lady there asked if i thought it was guppy disease on the females i have. We looked it up and sure enough the discription and symptoms were very similar. Down to the eroding of the flesh in a band around the mid body of the fish.
The only treatment i could find on the net for Tetrahymena was a formalin based ich remedy so i used it and it seems to be doing well for the guppies.
I know some puffers react differently to some meds, the proprietary meds that i have on hand and used on the guppies were Jungles Ich guard 2, and the parasite tank buddies. So far no more guppy losses.
Will any of those meds adversely affect Fred? the main ones appear to be Formalin the the ich medication and acriflavine in the antiparisitical.
I have had a heater/home heating problem and the tank too a bad chill for a couple days and i'm sure that didnt help anything.
I really really really dont want to loose this fish and i dont want to shot gun the disease and hope something works. All i've done so far is medicinal salt, 1 tablespoon for give gallons and a dose of antifungal....done this morning before i really thought about the idea of the "guppy plague" affecting puffers.
does anyone have any ideas on this, he's behaving normally, other than the fuzz on the body and tad bit on a fin all seems well. He's heated back up (done slowly, relatively) to 77 degrees. No ammonia, no nitrite, and less than 15 ppm nitrates, no other fish ( he likes to chew on them).
seems aquatronice ( i believe that was the company ) makes or used to make a product that was recomended for it but i havent been able to find it locally and not a lot of luck finding it available on the net....i'll look for the product again and try to post the info on here about.
Humpback puffer with a whitish fuzz..fungus or protozoa?
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.
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.
doing the melafix and pimafix and so far not really seeing an improvement, ill give it a couple more days and see how things look before switching out to the other meds. Doesnt look like its getting any worse which i suppose is a step in the right direction.
after dinner tonight i'll be doing a water change and surfing WWM for info on things like this, i swear i should just reset my home page there. Since i've been working at the LFS i've been there looking up something pretty much every night to refresh myself on salt water fish.
Happy turkey day
jason
after dinner tonight i'll be doing a water change and surfing WWM for info on things like this, i swear i should just reset my home page there. Since i've been working at the LFS i've been there looking up something pretty much every night to refresh myself on salt water fish.
Happy turkey day
jason