Puffer Really Sick

[pind4070]

About 1.5 months ago my two puffers (spiny and dog face) and Emperor angel just suddenly stopped eating. I think it was a GI infection from some possibly bad frozen food. After 7 days antibotics they seemed to slowly recover from this and slowly resumed eating. Then from the stress of all this ich crept in. After a week of hyposalinity and formulin treatments my angel died. The two puffers seemed to be on the rebound the ich was in remission although still present and things were looking up.

Then my dog face eyes turned cloudy and not the cloudiness that the ich sometimes produces this was a general haze completely over both eyes almost how a fish looks when it been dead a while. So I have hospitalized the little guy in a seperate tank (2 days now), still hyposalinity, with flagly and melafix. He also started to get really slimy. There are gobs of slim on his body and gobs of it in the tank and on the bottom on the tank. I do not know what is causing the cloudy eyes or the hyperslime coat on his body. There appears to be only a minimal amount of ich still on him if any. Water parameters are all good except for hyposalinity and his breathing is slightly labored.

Please any adivce or ideas would be greatly appreciated

 

[Lynden]

Well, you did the right thing by quarantining. My puffer, if particularly lazy, will become slimy; but not produce gobs of it like you describe. To be honest, you could try treating for gill flukes (produces eye haze and laboured breathing) and a freshwater bath here and there. Unfortunately I haven't had fish recover from gill flukes.

Freshwater baths require a bowl of pH and heat adjusted (to match the tank) RO water large enough to contain the puffer for a few minutes. Place the fish in the RO water and leave him for a few minutes, standing by to monitor the fish and prevent jumping. This is the only non-toxic treatment I know for gill flukes, but it will fail to save the fish if the infestation is too established, as the fish will already be severely weakened. There is also medecine available but I cannot recommend any particular brand. Treat the hospital tank to wipe out free-swimming parasites.

Hope to have helped, and good luck.

 

[pind4070]

Thanks for the info. After lots of research I have initiated cupramine treatments on the puffer along with the flagyl. I know copper products are not normally recommended for puffers by most people but this guy was going fast. In fact the hyper slime coat has cleared up with 2 days of cupramine. I plan to remove him from copper containing water tomorrow and continue with the flagyl and hyposalinity. Unfortunalty the poor guy got really spooked out tonight when I was around the tank that he flew into the heat/filter intake and got some minor scrapes on himself kinda banged himself up. Just one more thing for me to worry about. This was really odd for this fish to freak out like that. Normally if you put you hand in the tank he will come and curl up in a persons hand and go to sleep.