IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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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.
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Puffalicious
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IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by Puffalicious »

So, ever since I've had my GSP he has always been thin with a sunken stomach and I thought there was nothing wrong with that. Well after reading stuff here in the forum, I concluded that he has IPs.

Well I chose the pumpkin seeds method because I'm a cheapo, why would i want to buy medicine that cost way more if I can try to make a home remedy myself for way cheaper and it's been known to work...

Here's the process in making the Pumpkin Seed "Milk":

-Buy a small bag of raw pumpkin seeds from your local market.
-Acquire 1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds and 1 cup of water.
-Pour 1/2 cup of seeds and 1/2 cup of water into your blender/grinder and blend it until it looks milky (took me 3 minutes with a small food blender).
-Heat up the other 1/2 cup of water in a small pan and pour the blended seeds in there and stir well for 10 minutes or 5 minutes after boiling. Make sure to use LOW FIRE or else you'll burn some or all of it on the pan.
-Sieve the product with a cheese cloth or something that will catch the blended seeds.
-After it's done, cool it off and it's ready to for your puffer food to be soaked in this "milk".
-Soak for 2-3hours before feeding your puffer to make sure the food is well absorbed with this "milk".

Well those are the steps in making the Pumpkin Seeds Milk. Personally, I fed it to my puffer 3 times in 3 days, so once a day. They really like the stuff I think it has great flavor because when you're heating this stuff up, it smells so good. I could actually see what seems to look like worms coming out of his buttocks after 1-2hrs of feeding. I've never seen this stuff come out of him before, but I might be wrong and might just be thin feces.

After the third day, I fed him normal blood worms and his stomach was not looking sunk anymore and he looked normal. Now it's been 3 days since the last treatment and he is getting bigger and fatter. I can really tell the difference because he now looks normal :D

Hope this helps for anyone that wants to treat their puffer for IP but cannot acquire IP medicine.
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Myaj
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by Myaj »

Thanks for the update Puffalicious!
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manutius
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by manutius »

thats great news and thanks for the write up 8)
kimmers318
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by kimmers318 »

Never heard of a pumpkin seed treatment but it sure sounds like it worked wonders! Any more information you can give me......how did you hear about it, what caused someone to decided to try pumpkin seeds etc???? :D
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manutius
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by manutius »

Hey kimmers try a search for it on here, there is a thread about somewhere
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Puffalicious
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by Puffalicious »

kimmers318 wrote:Never heard of a pumpkin seed treatment but it sure sounds like it worked wonders! Any more information you can give me......how did you hear about it, what caused someone to decided to try pumpkin seeds etc???? :D
I did a search here and not a lot have tried it and the results were still iffy. But when you search google, you'll find a lot of hits because it has been used to treat farm animals like horses and sheeps.

The seeds itself contains an amino acid which can be used as a dewormer. Also, native americans have been using pumpkin seeds for the same purpose.
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PuffTheMagicFishy
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by PuffTheMagicFishy »

We also eat them 'cause they're tasty!
Tanks:
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75-gal West African Lungfish + snails

Other pets: Pacific parrotlet, Italian Greyhound, lots of plants
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Re: IP Treatment with Pumpkin Seeds... SUCCESS!!

Post by xxSarahxx »

It's so useful having this info... that's the one thing I love about forums like this.... so much information to share around between us...
PuffTheMagicFishy... I love pumpkin seeds too!!!
I love my Blinky Bu!!!!
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