The Puffer Forum

During feeding time now, I got a little shock. Only one of my irrubescos is eating. The other one doesn't dare to get over to the food. And I can see why. The male is beating his female when she tries to get over to the food.
He is healthy and round. She is horribly thin. Feeding at different places doesn't solve the problem.
Any ideas how to solve this? Right now I don't have any spare cycled filter, so I can split them either.
So far they've been very good friends, always sleeping together. I haven't checked out whether they still do it, though.

Target feed with a pipette. Or install a divider in the tank.

You could try using something (glass, screen, empty binder) to physically separate them during feedings. That would allow the female to get some food without being bothered.

Yea, I'd rig the tank up with a bare run in the middle, so you could just slap a plastic egg crate in and keep them separate during feeding.

I dunno, I think they'd be small enough to get through egg crate. I'd suggest a screen or a sheet of plastic embroidery form thing, that stuff is very inexpensive, easy to find and has small enough holes so they couldn't get through.

Yea, they have those at Joanna, michaels, a lot of the stores my gf goes to, would probably work quite well.

What is the temperature?
My female salivator is more active than the male if the temperature is around 24.
And do the male and female go to sleep at the same time?
Some off my females goes to sleep much later than the male irrubesco. So there's maybe some feeding time for the female there...

Hope she gets the food she needs soon!!

How is she?

Still very thin. I start to suspect more than just er husband eating it all. I have IP on my discuses (in another tank), and I suspect that it can have been transferred to this tank. I can't see anything coming out of her, like I did on my discuses (which was disgusting to watch). But she is much smaller, and isn't a discus. I guess they will react a little bit different, as discuses has a bit different digestion system (as far as I know). And I don't have much chance of studying her either, as she hides most of the time (she has always done that - remember the houdini story she made when I transferred them to a new tank?). Poor little thing. I'm worried about her

I wonder if you can find Flubenol 15 in Norway. You might want to look into it, Paul Fox swears by it to treat IPs. Since she's not eating, it may be the only way to treat her.

I already have Flubenol in my house And I have treated the discuses with it, with success

And now I have an unopened packet for treatment of 2000 G, so I guess that should be enough, for both the discuses and the puffers That's one of the meds I want to have in the house all the time, so it's already there when I need it. I also have PraziPro in the house, and several other good meds. But for IPs I definitely would use Flubenol. It worked on the discuses, so it should work on the puffers too. I just wonder whether I should give it to all the tanks that I can have transferred the IPs to. There's more than one tank that can have those disgusting things, as I've had to share some equipment (luckily not in all the tanks - I have many! 7 with puffers, and then there's tanks for suckermouths (I love the name suckermouth ), corydoras, killifishes and a few more ).

Troender wrote:I just wonder whether I should give it to all the tanks that I can have transferred the IPs to. There's more than one tank that can have those disgusting things, as I've had to share some equipment (luckily not in all the tanks).

Would this be a wise thing to do? I've done a lot of water changes today, so this would be the right day.

If you don't mind the cost, I'd do it just in case, eggs or tiny body segments are most likely to transfer, and if you wipe them all out before they can reproduce themselves, the problem will be gone forever.

A little update on the condition of Houdini:
She seems to have gained some weight Still thin, but not so awfully thin anymore. So I guess there was some IP involved in the story (gave them Flubenol earlier this week). I just hope she will continue to improve

I was pretty sure flubenol-15 was really effective from Shakespeare's recovery, but I am VERY certain now. My gf adopted a skeletal F8 from a salt water tank at her petco, really just a skull and spine and some puffer skin, and we flubenoled him twice at one week intervals. I never saw his poo after the first time, but it was off white kite string, kinky/squiggly and gross in the bag on the way home from petco.... now he poos dark nuggest, sometimes strung together by grey/brown strands, but dark nuggets, and is actually putting on weight quite visibly. His appetite has also gotten much stronger over the two weeks, and he eats a variety of foods well.