Puffer Not Being Himself Last Few Days....sick?

[phlawed]

my GSP seems to be a little down right now. His eating has slowed down alot and his colors are vary by the minute. one minute bright next still bright yellow but very light blending to yellow black spots, then very dark all the around...very strange to me right now. I changed the layout of the tank about a week ago giving him some more hiding spots and thats when this all began. Is he possible just getting use to the new landscape? There are no visible markings of infection. He is eating, but not eating as much as normal. Use to attack the frozen bloodworms at the top of the tank, but now just waits for them to sink and picks them up one by one on bottom leaving the rest for the ghost shrimp to scurry out of hiding to pick up. Going to by some more food options this weekend to see if that might help.

 

[phlawed]

Think its dropsy after doing some research...will double check with lfs who also has GSP's in his home tanks to make sure.

 

[nmonks]

Dropsy isn't that common, so I'd try and run through a list of alternative problems first.

Need some information though:

What's the pH/hardness/salinity?

What's the nitrate level?

Can we assume the filtration is working properly (i.e., no ammonium/nitrite)?

GSPs need a high hardness and pH, so if the pH is below 7.5, that's not good. Salinity should be relatively high as well, around SG 1.010 for juveniles, and anything up to full sea water (SG 1.018) for adults. If the salinity is too low, going off their food is exactly the sort of thing a puffer might do. The larger puffer species also seem to respond badly to high levels of nitrate, hence the recommendation to make regular water changes.

Fish do get bored with a single item of food. Mussels are recommend as a staple by Klaus Ebert in the Aqualog book. My South American puffer doesn't have much interest in them, but they're cheap, and certainly worth a shot. You also need some snails in the diet, unless you plan on trimming his teeth yourself.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[phlawed]

Dropsy isn't that common, so I'd try and run through a list of alternative problems first.

Need some information though:

What's the pH/hardness/salinity?

What's the nitrate level?

Can we assume the filtration is working properly (i.e., no ammonium/nitrite)?

GSPs need a high hardness and pH, so if the pH is below 7.5, that's not good. Salinity should be relatively high as well, around SG 1.010 for juveniles, and anything up to full sea water (SG 1.018) for adults. If the salinity is too low, going off their food is exactly the sort of thing a puffer might do. The larger puffer species also seem to respond badly to high levels of nitrate, hence the recommendation to make regular water changes.

Fish do get bored with a single item of food. Mussels are recommend as a staple by Klaus Ebert in the Aqualog book. My South American puffer doesn't have much interest in them, but they're cheap, and certainly worth a shot. You also need some snails in the diet, unless you plan on trimming his teeth yourself.

Cheers,

Neale

water test tonight using strips...will have master test kit in the morning...
salinity- 1.008 acclimating from freshwater +.002 weekly or biweekly depending on behavior
WOW massive PH spike off the charts eek so over 9.0
Hardness 300
Alk 275
No2 - 0
No3 0-20


guessing the PH has something to do with this crap.....ph chart is all orange from light orange to dark orange, test strip turned almost red

 

[nmonks]

Yes, pH sounds far too high. That would explain his behaviour, in my opinion. You want pH 7.5 to 8.2, something like that. A pH of 9.0 indicates that something is not quite right. A few water changes to get things back to normal is in order. It isn't common for the pH to go upwards so much. I've never seen it myself, and don't have any idea why it should happen. You do have a pH test kit that works in brackish/salt water?

Cheers,

Neale

 

[phlawed]

Yes, pH sounds far too high. That would explain his behaviour, in my opinion. You want pH 7.5 to 8.2, something like that. A pH of 9.0 indicates that something is not quite right. A few water changes to get things back to normal is in order. It isn't common for the pH to go upwards so much. I've never seen it myself, and don't have any idea why it should happen. You do have a pH test kit that works in brackish/salt water?

Cheers,

Neale

well one thing i did was start running oxygen into the filter inlet, which could explain the ph spike as it was always around 7.5-7.7 before i made the change. I removed it....i added some chopped crawfish and dangled it around and he finally came out and started eating some of it, so i will give me 30min-1hour and see how much he will eat of it. I am out of marine salt right now, so water change will have to start tomorrow first thing and go from there.

 

[nmonks]

Well here's one issue. You should really remove uneaten food within 10 minutes, and preferably in 5. Don't worry about the fish not eating for a few days. Fish can go 1-2 weeks without food, no problems (exception: baby fish). With the tank in an unstable, high-pH condition, I'd not risk compounding the problem with a nitrite/ammonium spike as well.

Cheers,

Neale

i added some chopped crawfish and dangled it around and he finally came out and started eating some of it, so i will give me 30min-1hour and see how much he will eat of it.

 

[phlawed]

well got good news and bad, sis said she would take Charly Manson (my gsp) and try to treat him back to health. She has an older GSP (few months) so she has a little more experience with this stuff. Has had figure8 puffers for around 2 years. So nursing it will not be so uncommon. I just hate having to ask my sister for help lol. Trying to catch up in the fishkeeping world with her without her knowing i use this forum so much lol. But anyways, long story short. She is getting charly to try and help out and once my tank restabilizes for a few weeks is giving me the older GSP (named Big Boss Man). He is a fat bastard and loves eating anything so said keeping should be a little easier than a baby GSP. But thanks for help everyone. Hoping tank will be ready for Big Boss Man in a few weeks. Miss my charly

also charly was 1.5" when purchased, and about 2-2.5" now, Big Boss Man 3.5". So exact age not known, just talking about date of purchases when talking age.

one last note, ph dropped back to normal after a full cleaning and 50% water change, also removed a lace rock that had a funky odor to it, and most other lace as a precaution.