Puffer experts please read!

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Drewbaby

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My girlfriends porcupine puffer has what we believe to be lockjaw. She normally eats very greedily and never has trouble. We feed every other day and tonight is feeding night. We feed a mix of raw foods that come in a stir fry mix from our local grocery store. Its comprised of squid, octopus, cuddlefish, and shrimp. We usually add garlic every other time we feed to keep her interested and for the health benefits. This is the first time she has had trouble eating and the worst part is she wants the food, chases it down, then can't get it in her mouth. I read that force feeding helps and I tried that. She let's us hold her under the water and put the food in her mouth. She holds her breath then spits a gush of water to get it out of her mouth. She can somewhat open her mouth to get the food out but not enough to eat it herself. What can we do to save this fish. We've had her for over a year and can't imagine losing her. She has been a big part of the family as she greets everyone as they walk past. I have read that anesthesia is the only way but I'm pretty nervous about that and don't even know where to begin. I would prefer a different route if any are available. Please advise us on what to do. We never had to deal with this before and we need help.

Please no rude or un needed comments we just want to help her and enjoy a long life with her.

Thank you
 
Any chance her teeth have grown to big for her to open her mouth????


If puffers dont regularly gnaw on shells of invertabrates their teeth get so big they can comfortably open their mouths. If so you need to trim the teeth.
 
I know some pufferfish require hard shelled foods to prevent their "beak" from growing too large. You may have to clip back the beak if it has grown too large and the puffer can no longer open its mouth.
 
Yeah sounds like overgrown teeth to me..Or could just be the puffers behavior, they act weird at times. Check out the teeth and see how they look. If it is the teeth there is a product called MS22 you can use it to put the fish to sleep so you can safely trim the teeth. Good Luck.....Oh and also there is a forum on Marine Depot and in the disease forum a person Kelly, aka puffer something or other....I forget... is really knowledgeable so go check out that forum also.
 
It's not her beak. I've been keeping an eye on that and it hasn't gotten that big as we sometimes fees her live crayfish and ghost shrimp to give her something semi hard to chew on. I'm pretty sure it's lockjaw because I can see into her mouth past her teeth. And there's plenty of room for her to get food in there.

I'll check out the puffer lady on marine depot, but if anyone else has any advice or experience with this please chime in and thank you to those who have already.
 
lock jaw is a vitamin defeciency, many times from to high of a protien diet....the current diet is like candy, tastes good but not good for you.....puffers need calcium from whole fish, pelleted food would be the diet of choice

sorry to say but many to do not survive.....
 
mm949 said:
lock jaw is a vitamin defeciency, many times from to high of a protien diet....the current diet is like candy, tastes good but not good for you.....puffers need calcium from whole fish, pelleted food would be the diet of choice

sorry to say but many to do not survive.....
Click to expand...

Thinking of this, maybe you could feed your fish in the future silversides for a better diet?

I have also heard somewhere that puffers eating krill gives them lockjaw. Take that with a grain of salt though.
 
We try and feed her silversides but most of the time she turns her nose up at it. We also feed octopus cuttlefish shrimp squid and sometimes live ghost shrimp that Are gut loaded with brine. We were feeding krill about once a week. The guy at our lfs told us that he doesn't think it's lockjaw. He urged us to start treating for internal paricites. So we did a water change and put in coppersafe. I am currently letting live ghost shrimp soak with live brine and I am going to try and feed her. I also got mysis shrimp that is frozen so if she won't go afer the live food we will grab her and put the pipet in her mouth and try the mysis. The guy at the lfs says he thinks it's paricites because she kept spitting the food out. If she was hungry she would eat right? Does this makes sence? Thanks for the help.
 
Who told you to use coppersafe? I would have chosen Cupramine. It is much safer on scaleless fish. I am also not positive I would have choosen copper as a first medicine choice. I am thing more along the lines of a PraziPro if he is thinking its an internal thing. But I wish you luck.
 
She's not skinny yet, but she will be if she doesn't eat a good meal soon. I was able to force some ghost shrimp into her yesterday. She didn't fight it because she knew I was trying to help, but today she refused to take any food. I tried silversides, squid, and mysis. Just kept spitting it out. If she won't eat tomorrow I'm going to order some ms-222. Where can I get some? Foster and smith is out of it and won't have any in for about 2-3 weeks. Who else carries it?
 
I hope you're at least gut-loading those ghost shrimp, as they have 0 nutrition. Pretty much like feeding a shell filled with water. What has she eaten previously? Are you doing something to remove that copper from your water, before it kills her?
 
Sorry I never got back to you about the puffer. She is doing great! I stopped dosing the copper and did a good water change in the QT. The lockjaw persisted about 2 1/2 weeks. I had to use the ghost shrimp for the first 3 days to get her comfortable enough with me force feeding her frozen clam, mussel, and squid. The ghost shrimp were gutloaded. I would cut up the frozen foods into pieces that were smaller than a pea so she could just nibble it a little then swallow without too much chewing. She has made a full recovery thanks to patience and is loving the free roam of a 180 gallon tank. I never had to use the ms222.

Thanks for all you advice and concern
Drew
 
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