Puffer with cloudy eye..

[Classroom.puffe]

Hello all. I'm new here. I have a super charismatic Figure 8 named Puff Puff McGuff. I once let a water change go a little too long in the past, and his right eye got cloudy. After a 25% change, it cleared up, and was fully healed within 24 hours. That was when he was in a 40 gallon, by himself.

Today, he's in a 75 gallon, by himself, with standard LED lighting strip, and upgraded filtration including protein skimming. He's a (Figure 8) brackish puff, from what I read, so his salinity is around 2.0ppt. I added a few plants months back, and to my delight, he ate them (it was adorable), so I added more recently, and they just died and I can only imagine tipped the nitrate scale as they died. As of two days ago, he's got cloudy eye, in the same right eye he got this before.

After 3 water changes over 2 days in his 75g house his ammonia levels are "0" using that standard pet shop 2x titration kit. I'm not a fan of that as "0", "5ppm", and "10ppm" nearly have the same orange-yellow coloration, but I think he has "0" because I also tested the saltwater storage aquarium - a separate aquarium that stores saltwater I used to mix RODI water to make brackish - and the nitrate colors were identical. Water temps steady around 78-79 and that has not changed over, well ever.

He has "0" nitrites, and "0" nitrates, now. Before I did the 3 water changes, he had around 5-10ppm nitrates.

If he is not better by tomorrow, I think I need to take chemical action. He's well spirited, and in normal behavior range and loves - LOVEs to eat. \

I realize I'm the 1100th person to post about this, but can anyone help me?

 

[Classroom.puffe]

Sorry - he eats blood worms, he eats the most red ones first which is adorable.. he prefers these worms over mysis and eats them like slurping-up linguini noodles, and chunks of cut up raw shrimp that I feed him.

 

[ThRoewer]

In my experience these puffers do much better in higher salinities. I kept some at full reef tank salinity and they did great and grew crazy fast. In brackish water with just a little salt I never managed to keep them alive for long and they never showed much growth.

Saltwater has antifungal and antibacterial properties so it will also reduce the fish's susceptibility to such infections.

 

[Classroom.puffe]

Update..

Update..

He's pulling through. I was just worried, two days ago signs of cloudy eye emerged, so I did several water changes. Cloudy eye signs improved by day's end. Then yesterday it got worse, worse than the day before. I was really scared for little puff. But today, day 3, signs are improving. He's happy and behaviorally healthy as that seems mostly normal.

That's interesting you keep your F8 in full salt. My F8 has been brackish since I've owned him, and he's going on about 4 years now. Growth is slow, but he's easily doubled in size. He's about 3" I'd say. Full of personality, and he loves keys, and likes to look at picture flip books, haha.