mattberrytr
New member
Hi,
For my new fish tank a few weeks ago I got two fish, a clown and a honeycomb toby puffer. They both seemed fine, but the water that the puffer came had extremely low salinity (which must have been because he had ich).
Fast forward about three weeks, both my clown fish and the puffer yesterday were showing signs of ich badly. The puffer had little spots ALL over him, the clown had a few around the ends of his fins. So i freaked out and moved them to another tank, and started to reduce the salinity slowly to treat the ich, in the process the puffer was out of the water for about 3 seconds, he took in some air, and I saw him burping it out.
Today he is lying on his side, not moving, but still alive. I figure maybe the other tank had had some ammonia/nitrite/nitrate build up (0.25 ammonia reading), so I made a fresh batch of salt water and moved him into it (into another tank), so the water parameters are perfectly fine. He is not breathing heavily and when he is disturbed he swims around really madly, so I don't think he is on his death bed (he still has energy it seems). It's like he can't stay upright, as when he swims he is wobbly and after a few seconds lays back on his side. I have tried burping him, but I don't want to keep stressing him (he puffed up when I was trying to catch him).
The clown is perfectly fine through all of this, not a worry.
Now the fish are no longer covered in ich spots...it went in one day (is that odd?). I obviously will continue to treat the tank to kill it in all it's stages though.
He looks pretty poorly, it's worrying to see him on his side like this, almost upside down, he's been like it for several hours, hopefully this is all just attributed to stress and he pulls through (clowny is staying right by his side giving him moral support).
Do you think I should try and burp him again? I don't want to stress the little guy out, but he keeps lying to one side, I can't see any injuries, and he doesn't seem to be dying, it's almost like he just can't sit up, or swim straight. I'm wondering if this behaviour is normal after they have puffed up and whether or not I should just leave him. The salinity of the water is 1.016, so I don't want to continue ich treatment until he looks a bit better, as I don't think the ich has caused this.
One other thing is that he has lost colour on the front half of his body, not sure if this is just related to stress, I assume it is.
Pic:
For my new fish tank a few weeks ago I got two fish, a clown and a honeycomb toby puffer. They both seemed fine, but the water that the puffer came had extremely low salinity (which must have been because he had ich).
Fast forward about three weeks, both my clown fish and the puffer yesterday were showing signs of ich badly. The puffer had little spots ALL over him, the clown had a few around the ends of his fins. So i freaked out and moved them to another tank, and started to reduce the salinity slowly to treat the ich, in the process the puffer was out of the water for about 3 seconds, he took in some air, and I saw him burping it out.
Today he is lying on his side, not moving, but still alive. I figure maybe the other tank had had some ammonia/nitrite/nitrate build up (0.25 ammonia reading), so I made a fresh batch of salt water and moved him into it (into another tank), so the water parameters are perfectly fine. He is not breathing heavily and when he is disturbed he swims around really madly, so I don't think he is on his death bed (he still has energy it seems). It's like he can't stay upright, as when he swims he is wobbly and after a few seconds lays back on his side. I have tried burping him, but I don't want to keep stressing him (he puffed up when I was trying to catch him).
The clown is perfectly fine through all of this, not a worry.
Now the fish are no longer covered in ich spots...it went in one day (is that odd?). I obviously will continue to treat the tank to kill it in all it's stages though.
He looks pretty poorly, it's worrying to see him on his side like this, almost upside down, he's been like it for several hours, hopefully this is all just attributed to stress and he pulls through (clowny is staying right by his side giving him moral support).
Do you think I should try and burp him again? I don't want to stress the little guy out, but he keeps lying to one side, I can't see any injuries, and he doesn't seem to be dying, it's almost like he just can't sit up, or swim straight. I'm wondering if this behaviour is normal after they have puffed up and whether or not I should just leave him. The salinity of the water is 1.016, so I don't want to continue ich treatment until he looks a bit better, as I don't think the ich has caused this.
One other thing is that he has lost colour on the front half of his body, not sure if this is just related to stress, I assume it is.
Pic:
