Puffer fish sick

[Bellesfish]

Hi everyone my blue spot toby puffer looks very very sick and I was wondering if anyone could diagnose him/has any experience with this or whether he is just old. Is is around 2 and a half 3 and lives with a clownfish and chalk goby in a 30 gal. Water quality is always great and all readings are perfect including mineral ones for corals. All other fish are fine. He is regularly pushed around by the clownfish but nothing too major. It didn’t use to be as often as it is now however. He has suddenly gone extremely thin and has white blots on his skin. It is not white spot as have experienced and treated this before. It is paler and larger white dots only present on his body and not fins or tail. They are quite faded and don’t really stand out. I will post pictures, thankyou for looking and replying. I would hate him to suffer from something we can cure.:sad1:

[JustinM]

It looks like flukes, do you see any flashing or anything? A FW dip can confirm this.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bellesfish]

It looks like flukes, do you see any flashing or anything? A FW dip can confirm this.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


No I’ve not seen any flashing but he is displaying a lot of those symptoms. We are researching into medication, thankyou for the reply I will keep it posted as to whether it’s successful or not

[JustinM]

Are you from the UK? I believe there was a thread from a fellow reefer who had trouble obtaining the right meds for this but he did find it. I’ll see if I can find the thread.

[JustinM]

I believe it’s called Sterazin. Search that, it should be available in the UK.

[Bellesfish]

Here is close up of the white spots

[JustinM]

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2650346

[Bellesfish]

I believe it’s called Sterazin. Search that, it should be available in the UK.

Yes I am and thankyou very much, we are ordering some right now. Thankyiu so much for the help :)

[JustinM]

No problem. Hopefully that helps! I would FW dip him in the mean time to help confirm flukes as well as relieve him a bit. I do not know much about this product, I am in the states and we usually prazipro and formalin. I would probably use it as a bath or pm kaiser699 and see what he did with it. Best of luck!

[Bellesfish]

No problem. Hopefully that helps! I would FW dip him in the mean time to help confirm flukes as well as relieve him a bit. I do not know much about this product, I am in the states and we usually prazipro and formalin. I would probably use it as a bath or pm kaiser699 and see what he did with it. Best of luck!

We have it on order and are warming some RO water for a dip tomorrow morning as it’s 11pm here now. Hopefully this will relieve him and he can live out many more years in the tank happy and healthy. Thanks again for figuring out what was wrong :) I will update how it goes

[Bellesfish]

No problem. Hopefully that helps! I would FW dip him in the mean time to help confirm flukes as well as relieve him a bit. I do not know much about this product, I am in the states and we usually prazipro and formalin. I would probably use it as a bath or pm kaiser699 and see what he did with it. Best of luck!

Just thought anyone reading or struggling with a similar issue might like to know that this morning puffer was found lying on his side all listless and he didn’t look too good. We put him in a 10min freshwater (RO) bath heated to his tank temp and then put him back in tank he was more sat up but still not swimming. An hour or so later we did the same thing again for another 10 mine (puffers are recommended to be able to stand the freshwater conditions for longer than other marine fish which are recommended 2-5 mins) and put him back into tank slowly transporting in a cup so he didn’t take in any air (bad for puffers as you all probably know) he slowly got more and more vibrant and lively and three hours later I am watching him swim around happily with the others with his tail flared eating brine and garlic and minerals etc!! So pleased. He looks absolutely 10 times better than before we bathed him. His skin shows no visible markings anymore but medication is still on its way and will be used if necessary. He still needs to gain weight and recover a bit but it’s going in the right direction! Thankyou for the advice given I’m sure mr puffer is grateful to you haha :)))

[JustinM]

Puffer still doing good?

[Bellesfish]

Puffer still doing good?

Yep swimming and Eating happily! :)