The Puffer Forum

Hello again, everyone!
I was hoping my first post on this forum would be in the brackish forum, not the hospital, but here goes:
If you read my thread on the other forum, my first Figure 8 puffer that I purchased last Monday died one day later under mysterious circumstances. I did a large water change, leaving the water basically fresh (slightly higher salinity than 1.000, but not even 1.001). My new puffer (bought Thursday) came from a freshwater tank this time. I acclimated him over an hour, released him, and he slowly overcame his stress and began prancing around like he owned the tank (which he does).
Today when I left for work, he was fine; ate a couple bloodworms and cruised around. However, when I got home 8 hours later, he was laying on the sand not really moving. After some provocation, he started moving around, mostly going up-and-down the glass in the corner. Then I noticed a pinkish thing trailing from his left gill:

He's been showing labored breathing and will either sit on the bottom or swim around at the surface. I added an airstone in the hopes that the aeration would help.
Water parameters are:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: <0.1ppm (Nitrite spike, despite the addition of another ounce of Biospira and lots of seeded media; did a water change yesterday to take it down)
Nitrate: <5ppm

I'm not sure whether this *thing* is some type of nematode, gill flukes, or just a mucosal secretion from the gills, possibly due to nitrite. In the case of nitrite and the rest of the possibilities, I did a large water change to the tank with some matured, higher-salinity water, bumping up the tank's salinity to about 1.002.
Any help with this would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Argh; it's now coming out of both gills.

I wish I could be more help here, but that doesn't look like a gill fluke to me --- looks much to large. Actually, it looks a lot like a blood worm - does it look that way in person?

Eric

It does look a lot like a blood worm in person.
I've heard of fish getting them caught in their gills before, and I do feed him blood worms (he had a bloodworm breakfast).
I'm hoping that's all it is; but his behavior indicates something is definitely wrong (he's been running into things and buzzing around the surface since my last post). Also, a smaller one appeared out of the right gill where there was none before.

Very often a puffer's breakfast will poke out thru their gills. Could you please reduce the size of you pic? It doesn't fit on my screen. No larger then 800x600 please.

Sorry about that; down-sizing as we speak.
The left gill is now free of the bloodworm, or whatever it was. It's opening and closing properly. The right gill still has whatever it is poking out of it. The puffer's not gasping at the surface as much anymore, but is still acting fairly disoriented (bumping into objects).

Anthropomorphizing a bit, but if you had part of your breakfast hanging out of your nose and didn't have arms and those handy opposible thumbs, you might be acting pretty freaky, too.

I'm hoping it's just bloodworm that somehow got lodged in the gills and once the other side clears will be better off.

He's turning for the worse. Got sucked against my filter intake a couple times and has just (in the past few minutes) started turning upside-down up top. Barring optimism, he's not going to make it.

Edit - he's lying on his side now, barely breathing (and when he does, it's heavy).

Argh, that doesn't sound good at all. I lost my first Figure 8 last week to a whole mess of problems including ich, labored breathing, a cloudy eye, etc - I had him for less than a week. He ended up with behavior similar to what you've said your Figure 8 is doing now...However, nothing came out of his gills that was that big.

I hope he pulls through. If not, I'm really sorry and know how you feel.

Eric

It's looking grim.
That's two Figure 8's within a week from the same LFS. I am NOT going back to that LFS for my puffer needs, suffice to say. There's a salt water place relatively close to me that can order one in and that has a 2-week quarantine for all of their fish. It'll be more expensive and will take a month, but that's far better than going through yet another puffer loss.
I also work in a medical/immunological lab. Tomorrow I'll find out what killed this puff.

Do let us know what you find out, but it definitely sounds like something is up with your LFS's stock of Figure 8s. I bought my second Figure 8 from the same store that my sick one came from (he looked too good and too healthy to let him languish and get sick there), but so far (knock on wood) he seems much healthier with only a very mild case of ich.

If I were you, I'd order from that Saltwater place, too. Healthy stock is worth the wait.

Eric

I only wish that we had a LFS that QT'd their stock for two weeks before slapping on a price tag. The best around here is "Their fresh! I just finished dumping the bag into the tank!" and maybe a 5-day guarantee. I'd gladly pay extra for fish that were properly QT'd and cared for prior to the sale. I'd still QT them myself though, trusting sole that I am.

Sorry to hear about the issues with the new puffer. Please let us know what you find out in the lab.

It's been a while since I posted on this, but it's time for a conclusion.
I was unable to perform any autopsy myself due to the concerns of my boss (we do a lot of work with tissue cultures and though the risk of contamination is low, it's safest not to work with something that could be transferred to the cultures). A few days after this Figure 8 died, I had a course in mouse handling/injections. I asked the person teaching us the techniques if she knew anybody on campus who does fish necropsies and I was referred to one professor who is the veterinary pathologist for our campus. Turns out he does fish necropsies as a hobby and was more than willing to look at my deceased puff. Here's his diagnosis:

In the puffer's gills were a very large number of digenic trematodes, gill flukes. Not just your everyday gill flukes, though. Basically, a species of gill flukes from hell. Highly infectious, almost always completely lethal. As if that weren't enough, it can complete its life cycle in an aquarium - all it needs is a fish host's gills to latch onto, feed, and then gives birth (yep, not eggs, but birth) to more trematodes. To top it off, in order to kill these buggers in live fish, the amount of antihelmetics necessary will kill the fish themselves. Trout and salmon farms occasionally have problems with this parasite and have to eliminate their stocks then purge the water with high doses of these antihelmetics. Fortunately, in the literature he was able to find, these flukes will only live between 48 and 72 hours without a host before they die. A salinity of low brackish content or higher will also kill these flukes. The red worm-like thing coming from the puffer's gills in my picture is actually bloody mucus due to the damage caused by the flukes.
The first puffer I bought that died the next day likely died as a result of this same trematode. When I introduced the new puff to the tank, despite the large water change beforehand, it likely got infected by the flukes as the 72 hour mark would just have been reached. Due to the infectiousness of these flukes, the water change merely slowed this puff's death by diluting the flukes.

Not the happiest news in the world, but at least it's closure. I'll be buying my next Figure 8 from the salt water place near me (who, it turns out, does not quarantine non-marine fish, but does put brackish fish into 1.005 SG water). Hopefully my next puffer venture won't turn out as tragic.

Wow, very interesting! How lucky you were to find such an expert on the subject. So what is the SG that would have killed the flukes?

I'm with PP in wondering what SG would kill the flukes. My deceased figure 8 also had that extremely laboured breathing (along with the white stuff over one eye and half his body...so obviously something else was going on). I had my SG at 1.004 or .005 at one point but it didn't seem to help any.

Eric