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Sick Mappa Puffer
Hi folks, It's been a while since I needed your help, but I now have a 5" Mappa puffer with some kind of embolism. It may be the classic air bubble, but I'm not sure. He floats very aggressively (not sure how else to put it) such that he has to work hard to keep himself off the surface and now spends his time lodged under overhangs to keep himself anchored. The potentially peculiar thing about his condition that I haven't seen mentioned before is that his buoyancy is very much in his posterior - he floats head down. There may be some body distortion back around the anus with a slight bulge on each side, but there has always been this sort of shape anyway - it may just be slightly more pronounced now. He is obviously not eating. Given the apparent location of the embolism I wondered if it might be a digestive problem of some sort. Some history now. He has been in my tank about 6 weeks. He has been eating well since acquisition with feedings consisting mostly of scallop, mussel, shrimp, blue crab, and Spectrum pellets. The symptom onset was sudden as he seemed fine yesterday morning, and couldn't swim yesterday evening. About 1 week ago I began treating the tank with copper for ich. Specifically I am using Cupramine that I have slowly ramped up to the recommended 0.5 ppm concentration. The tank unfortunately has a latent, chronic infestation that I have been unable to eradicate and it bloomed when a new fish was added a couple weeks ago. Please help - I have to go out of town for 3 days on Thursday for Christmas and besides potentially losing the puffer I could do damage to the whole tank if I have a large dead poisonous fish in there for that period of time! |
<Hi there! Sounds like your Mappa has an air bubble trapped inside his stomach, you should try “burping” him. To do this you need to hold the puffer vertically in your hand with his tale end up in the water, do not lift him above the surface or the condition will worsen. While the puffer is vertically suspended gently massage the stomach with your thumb and he should expel the extra air. Your puffer may puff up when you do this and that’s fine, it will help him to expel the air along with the water. As for the ick problem,
NO COPPER MEDS EVER WITH PUFFERS!!!! Instead try hyposalinity, slowly lower the sg on the tank a few points for a couple of weeks until the ick is gone (ick can’t live in lower salinity levels) when the parasite is dead raise the sg back to normal. Good Luck! LinearChaos>
puffer faq
Addtional excerpt:
Puffers and copper
Hello, enjoy you website!
Reading the article:
/The Conscientious Marine Aquarist
All My Puffers, Tobies, Box, Porcupine, Cowfishes
It states that puffers respond well to copper, yet in the forums it is repeatedly mentioned to NEVER treat a puffer with copper. Which is accurate?
Thx, Patty
<Mmm, a bit tricky here... IMO/E Tetradontiforms, including puffers do "respond well to copper"... but a necessary cautionary note here. In general, copper compounds have a narrow range of efficacy. That is, there is not much "room" between effective dosage/treatment and overdosing catastrophe... this range is even smaller/shorter with them as a group... Requiring treatment in substrate-less settings, with "new" seawater, vigilance in testing for and re-applying therapeutic copper (chelated is better here)... and a close eye on accumulating metabolites (e.g. ammonia) and ready change water to dilute same. Other WWM Crew (Ananda, likely Jeni/Pufferpunk) are against the use of copper with these fishes, preferring other chemical use... Ideally, prevention, careful dipping/bath and quarantine procedures prevail in warding off infestations... Bob Fenner>
addtional puffer faq
these are some of the articles to witch I refrenced obviously there are more articles to read but the links will take you to the full page to read the concensious there seems to be no copper with puffers HTH
