I purchased a Pocrupine Puffer on the 17th of last month and had him in qt until today. The qt went through some troubles about a week ago and I connected an additional tank to it with some substrate in it. The last couple of days it has started to breath heavier and heavier. This morning he was looking pretty bad and I was worried it was the qt tank doing it to him. Currently there is only a small snowflake eel in the 75g display so I moved him in hoping the other tank would have better water quality.

He continues to breath heavier and was resting on the bottom a moment ago. It appears to be struggling to swim. I am going to test the tank now to check the parameters. The tank has been running a little cool ~76-77, so I added a heater and hope it will return to 79-80.

Jon

Oh I should add his appetite has diminished over the last 3-4 days. It was eating krill like a champ with occasional squid, but got tired of both it had seemed two days ago. I tried some silver sides and it ate one last night like a champ. It defecated this morning in the new tank, but I did not look that closely at it, nor would I know what looks normal not having had the fish that long.

I will try to post some pics soon.

Jon

What a night for my camera to die!

Most all levels seem fine accept when I checked ph. On my old lab kit which I think is getting dated it showed a pH of 7.8! I checked it with something newer I had and it came up as 8.2.... I added enough pH buffer, by directions, for 20gallons.(again it is a 75g tank)

I noticed a dot on his side which almost looked like an infected spike. Tried to take a pic, but my camera isn't working. Will try charging batteries and taking another pic in the am.

Jon

I think it may be down for the count. It is on the bottom breathing pretty heavy. I uploaded a small video of it to my website. (Unlike Rob's vids this one 99.9% of people should be able to view(PCs are better then MACs :-P)

http://www.gordonious.com/RC/HPIM7255.MPG

I also caught a half decent pic of the little spot on it's side which I will try to upload now.

http://www.gordonious.com/RC/Porcupinefish/HPIM7251cse.JPG
http://www.gordonious.com/RC/Porcupinefish/HPIM7251.JPG (LARGER image of the same thing)

http://www.gordonious.com/RC/Porcupinefish/HPIM7260cs.JPG
http://www.gordonious.com/RC/Porcupinefish/HPIM7260.JPG (LARGER image of the same thing)

If I had a sick puffer I would head on over to Marine depot's forum and share this with The Puffy Queen, Kelly Jedlicki. She oversees the disease section there and has earned her name.

I would have posted there this am if it was still alive, but it did not make it though the night. :-(

Now I am worried because I had planned to move other animals into this tank next week. I don't know if the fish was diseased and it is now in that water or if poisons excreted from the dead fish could not be in the water. I plan to do a water change, but don't know if I have enough water to do a massive water change.