The Puffer Forum

I just brought home my newest puffer, a Fahaka. I have been wanting one for awhile and when my LFS got him in it was love at first site. I have named him Maximus. He is about 2.5 inches. When he got in at the LFS he had an internal parasite, he was pooping white stringy stuff. They treated him there and he is past that now. He then got ich and they were supposed to be treating that as well. They were using Jungle ich, temperature, and salt. I was scheduled to pick him up on this past Monday. When I got there he still was showing signs of a few ich parasites on him. We counted three. I decided that he would benefit more from my TLC than the bunch of employees at the LFS. They were trying to keep the temperature at 83 degrees, but apparently some employees were readjusting the heater all the time. I have my tank at 84 degrees, used some aquarium salt, and gave one dose of the jungle ich. He was very shy when I brought him home last night. He is swimming more around the tank and I fed him frozen bloodworms tonight that he ate up very quickly to give him a nice little belly. I plan to do a water change tomorrow and add more salt. I am going to abstain from any more medicine in the hopes that temperature and salt will rid the ich. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

get him on Prawns or else later on you will be feeding him buckets of bloodworm.
And they grow bloody fast!
Good luck....Lovely Puffer...The best in my view

Do a major water change and get that jungle ich out of the tank. You don't need it and chemicals tend to do more harm than good. Treat with heat and salt for at least 2 weeks after the last time you see a spot on him - not two weeks from the time you start treatment.

What size tank is he in? Is there anyone else in the tank with him?

He is in a 75 gallon. I know its too small for him, but I hope to get a 120 or larger by December. The tank is fully cycled, did it with bio spira, took me about three weeks. Ammonia 0, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 5. I have two flying foxes in there from the cycling. I have been trying to get them out but they are so damn fast and hide in the wood. He pays no attention to them and they leave him alone. I know I need to get them out of there. I have a Eheim canister filter 2215. I dropped the water level by 3 inches and placed the sprayer down to create more oxygen in the tank. He is acting normally, swimming around, comes to the front of the tank when I am there. Should I see some more spots develop in the coming days due to the life cycle of the ich progressing? I know there were only a couple spots on him from Monday when he was at the LFS, but his tank water there was cold.

Maybe this topic needs to be in the hospital section. How do I move the topic? Do admins do that for me?

You may see more spots at some point over the next few days, yes. They often live in the gills unseen as well. Just make sure you keep up the treatment for a minimum of 2 weeks, longer is better. The flying foxes should be okay with the amount of salt used for treatment.

Topic moved.

Boxermom,

What constitutes mass water change? 50% 70% 80%? The temperature is at 84, should I have it any higer or is that sufficient? Thanks.

Jon

84 is sufficient. I'd do as big a water change as possible in order to get out as much of the medication as possible.