Porcupine Puffer With Ich

[KellyFishy]

Aloha,

I'm living in Hawaii, special ordered a fish from Petco. He arrived on Wednesday, I picked him up on Friday. He seems to have adjusted well. He eats very well, is very alert, even curious. I am so in love!

But Saturday night, I noticed small little white spots all over. Difficult to notice at first, but since, they've become more apparent. I've received a broad spectrum of advice from "just be sure he eats and dump some stress coat in, he'll be fine" to people suggesting copper, formalin, methylene blue, etc (which I know he'll react poorly to). Yes hospital tank, no hospital tank. Fresh water dips 1 min, to three hours! Hyposaline dips of 1.009ppt.

It's just overwhelming, and I so badly want to make the best choices for this guy.

Yesterday I added stress coat. Today I did a hypo dip for 15 minutes. Five minutes later, he hate just fine.

My parameters are:

pH 7.6
nitrite .125
nitrate 15ppm
ammonia 0.


For nitrite and nitrate, I sort of guessed high on, but they could be as low as 0 nitrite and 10ppm for nitrate.

What do I do next? Help!

 

[VaegaVic]

Ammonia and NitrIte should always be 0 in a mature tank, did you cycle your tank before hand?
If he's a mail order fish, I would expect the journey to be incredibly stressful anyway, which can bring on whitespot all by itself.

Any tank mates?

 

[kj23502]

I would let him be. Keep feeding vitamin enriched foods using selcon and garlic. High quality food and high quality water will help a healthy fish out of it. Over here these fish seem to come in with flukes. We use Prazipro for that. When I set up my fowlr I will feed prazi as a preventative.


When you did the nitrite test did you do a re-check? If I get a weird reading I always retest. If you aren't sure about the color have someone with you to give their opinion.

 

[seffieuk]

How is the guy?

Seffie x

where are my manners - to TFF

 

[KellyFishy]

Hi Seffie,

Thank you for the welcome and your concern. He's still kicking! His appetite seems a little diminished, and he has snubbed both cocktail and mysis shrimp, and then eaten the other when I've offered. His spots grew in size, I dipped him in hypo for 12-15 min two consecutive days, and they reduced in size, but as far as I could tell, not in number. Do they shrink away? Although he was calm through the dips, catching seemed to add a lot of stress, so I've backed off. The little guy is so aware he would rush to the back of the tank if I approached, even if just for feeding. Eating is so important at this point, I really want to maintain that.

Any advice?
-Kelly

 

[seffieuk]

I would leave him alone for now - I take it he is the only fish in the tank?

I am surprised you have nitrIte in your tank, how long since the cycle? Do you have live rock for filtration?

Phosphate levels?

What is your sg?

Have you tried wiggling a prawn on a stick?

How long did you acclimatise him for?

Seffie x