Help Id disease in valentini puffer

Martini5788

Martini5788

New member
Yesterday, I received 2 valentini puffers. A guy in my town runs and online business and ordered them from a distributor in Florida. When I got them home and acclimated in my tank I noticed that all of the fins on both fish have white spots, were very torn up and frayed. Both were breathing hard as well. When I was picking up the fish yesterday I looked at all the other fish that came in and they all looked awesome and nothing like these 2. I found the male dead this morning. I dosed the 20 gal qt with chloroquine phosphate yesterday as soon as I saw the fins. I did a fw dip on the dead puffer this morning and had about 20 flukes or so come out of the body. The guy that I got them from called the distributor today and they were very shocked as they say all of the fish look fine or they wouldn't have shipped them. I do trust this guy, and based on his reaction I believe that this is something new that happened. The remaining puffer actually looks a little better today but not much. I know that I am dealing with flukes, but also either ich or velvet. I am leaning towards velvet because of the very quick deaths of the male puffer and how fast is escalated after shipping. I was under the impression that ich will not cause death in less than 12 hours. I took pictures but they are horrible quality, I will post them anyways though. Either way, I would like to figure out the best course of treatment to try and save the remaining puffer. Thanks!
 
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Agree with you on all counts. Sounds like you are dealing with velvet so you are treating correctly with CP. Do you have any Prazi on hand?
 
Yes I do. I just put 5 ml into the 20 gallon qt. is that enough? After the 30 days of cp, I plan to do tank transfer as well. Just in case it is ich, although I don't
Think it is. That might be overkill but oh well
 
Help Id disease in valentini puffer

I added an airstone when I put the prazi in. I just checked on her and she seems to be developing more spots. She was looking better this morning and now she is looking worse. Are velvet spots usually limited to the fins or will they spread to the whole body? It's hard to tell because of her coloring and the lack of lighting
 
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Yes, which I was prepared for because I know that she has to have flukes too because the other puffer did. She survived the night. Still doesn't look good but she is alive.
 
At this point you are doing everything you can. Personally I didn't have any luck treating velvet with CP but that was a couple of years ago and I don't think it was pure. As a last resort you could try a FW dip which will knock back the oodinium parasite and kill some flukes.
 
I did a fw dip a few weeks ago on a chromis which had disastrous results. So I'm gonna skip the fw dip for now and hope for the best. She is still alive and appears to have less spots than before, which really shocked me. I am using new life spectrum ick shield powder, so we will see. It's supposed to be pretty effective but we will see
 
Yes I would do the fw dip and I can say that's not ich so if it makes you feel better do the tank transfer method but I don't see it as necessary.

I too believe this is velvet as well as the flukes. I've never successfully treated velvet so I don't have any advice on it. I lost my whole 200 gal tank to it 10 years ago and did everything that was possible at that time to treat it. I do wish you well in this but today there are treatments that can help. I would honestly do the fw dip first and then treat the velvet as you are fighting two fronts IMO.
 
Ya know when I started this thread I wanted everyone to tell me I was wrong and that it's not velvet and that it was definitely crypto!! This is one of the few times in my life that I have actually WANTED to be wrong. In my head I was telling myself that I was jumping to conclusions and being dramatic. Apparently I'm not[emoji17]. She is still alive currently, but the water is very cloudy from the prazi so it's hard to tell if she has gotten any better and I can't have a light on because of the cp. my next question is, should I get anymore fish from this guy? It makes me really really nervous and since I have yet to find many people that have successfully treated velvet then idk if I can trust the fish from him even if I qt all future fish I MIGHT purchase from him
 
I was also planning on purchasing coral from this guy in the next few weeks. But he has fish in his tanks that have never been through any kind of qt that he got from the same distributor. He just dumps the fish and corals right in. I also don't have a qt set up for corals with correct lighting to sustain them through a qt process. So, my thinking is that I should not purchase any future fish or corals from him. Also, his distributor is sea life inc in Florida I'm almost 100% sure just as a heads up.
 
No need to qt corals, just do a coral dip and temp/drip acclimate after the dip and put them in low in the tank for a week then you can start moving them depending on light/flow requirements.
 
No, there is no dip that will kill any fish diseases. Quarantine is your only option. I wouldn't get any more livestock from him.
 
Newsmyrna80 said:
No, there is no dip that will kill any fish diseases. Quarantine is your only option. I wouldn't get any more livestock from him.
Click to expand...

I agree. I would definitely not get any livestock from this source. However, corals have potential issues as well, and I personally would dip corals before adding them to my display tank.
 
That's what I thought. I would want to qt corals for 30 days to be safe and make sure there weren't any life stages of the parasite hitchiking and I just don't have to option to do that at this time. Snorvich, do you also agree that I am dealing with velvet? It's makes me so nervous, and want to throw away all the stuff I used for qt on this fish. I suppose I could bleach it and then dry it out for a long time. The puffer is still alive and I know for a fact that some of the spots have gone away and she is swimming easier. She has regained some of her coloring and is starting to look more white on her body. She isn't eating as much as she was but I feel like that is due to the prazi pro
 
The treatment of choice for velvet is always chloroquine phosphate in a hospital tank. Fallow period for velvet is six weeks.
 
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