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I feed him this moring and after about a hr he throw half of it up and sense then he has been blown up where talking like 4hrs now!

What do i do?

tank 75 water is okay nitrates still a little high around 20 everything else good!

its a porcpine and he goes down a tiny bit then rate back up??? Hes about 5 inch ball had him for about 6 mo!


http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

The first possible problem is that he's stressed. If there's anything new in the tank I'd remove it and if the puffer is having any trouble swimming I'd turn down the filtration so long as doing so won't harm anything else in the tank or risk the loss of biological filtration. Then carefully do a water change trying not to stress the puffer more than it already is. Much easier to do if you have a sump. There could be toxins in the water you can't test for.

A 2nd possible problem is that puffers can become stuck while puffed up if they suck in any air. Reason you should not move a puffer out of water. Most people seem to just wait it out to see if they manage to expel the air themselves. I have seen instructions around on how to help a puffer expel air. Under disease and health concerns on this site http://www.wetwebmedia.com/puffcareinfo.htm there's mention of it. However you would have to be really careful and could risk stressing the puffer enough to hasten it's death instead of helping it.

Just curious, how did this resolve??

well its been what 3 days or so and he is doing better but his skin is messed up from blowing up so big so i am treating it with melfix and got my water in check but he still hasent eat anything and the one fin has root or whatever you want to call it so he is not swiming so well but other then that i think he will make it!


I dont know what the reason for this was other then i dropped my nitrates from 100 to 20 and now there at 5 so maybe all the water changes stressed him? Really unknown

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2571255/2

You might have dropped the nitrates too fast. Fish adjust to the high nitrate water after awhile. It doesn't mean it's good for them and they will suffer illness and die much sooner than in low nitrate water but changing the nitrate levels is about the same as changing the ph or the temp. It can't be done quickly. They need time to adjust. Plenty of well meaning people have killed off an entire tank because they found the nitrates were off the chart and did huge water changes trying to fix it.

If you keep the nitrates where they are now I would think the puffer will recover. He just needs time to adjust and you need to keep his water cleaner so he doesn't have to get stressed out like that again. I don't know about feeding saltwater puffers but soaking food in garlic often stimulates most fish to eat. Using a live food will also make it more desireable than frozen or especially dry.