The Puffer Forum

i have 2 baby fig 8 puffers, had them for a few days, one hasn't been doing so well. His colour is very washed out, sort of had a reddish tinge to him last night. He didn't eat either. Today I notice he is even more washed out and has long stringy poop hanging from him.

Water parameters were good as of last night, ammonia 0, nitrates 5, and nitrites 0. Have been treating with Melafix and Pimafix, today will be the 3rd day.

Any ideas whats wrong? is there anything else I can do to help???

Sounds like internal parasites. Check out this article: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... treatment/

Seems like there have been a lot of cases of baby F8s with IPs lately.

ok, not sure which meds to use, I have 2 in the qt tank, the real sick one hasn't eaten yet, the other one ate a tiny bit. He seems to have stringy poop too but doesnt look near as bad. I would like to start treating him tonight as he looks real bad and am not even sure if he'll make it.

Not sure what meds they sell in Canada. More specifically, my stores aren't the best.

Any suggestions?

Gotcha on IM.

thought I'd let you know, treated the 2 of them last night, the sicker one wouldn't eat. Even tried soaking the food in garlic slices. This morning I woke up and he was gone

I'm hoping this other one pulls through. He ate 2 worms at least . . . and looks relatively healthy.

Sorry to hear about that. Hope the other one is OK

As long as they are still eating you have a chance. It's when they stop that you run into trouble.

Hope he pulls through.

he's quite picky, it seems that he has no interest in the food unless I keep it moving, the second it falls to the bottom of the tank he wants nothing to do with it. This is probably partially due to the fact that the guy at the store ONLY fed him live blackworms. Argh!

He doesn't appear to be eating much but he's picking away here and there, hopefully getting enough.

Very often if you leave the fallen food for a little while and leave the room, they'll start picking at it. Puffers are often shy about eating in front of people and prefer to do it in private.