Help! Not sure what is wrong with my puffer

[arcticbread]

Hello! So there is definitely something going on with my puffer. About a month ago I introduced a fish into my tank that was sick and ended up dying last week. Many people on here thought that it was velvet, but I do not know for sure. I moved into college and ended up tearing down my tank and setting it back up on Thursday. My puffer has been itching against the rocks a decent bit and I have a scooter blenny who has been acting completely normal through all of this. Today, Sunday, I noticed my puffer hanging out on the rocks as if he was sleeping which is out of the ordinary since I have my windows open and lights on. Also, when he's on the rock like that, it looks like he might be breathing heavy. I tested my water and everything was normal except the ammonia was 0.25 which may have been from some water spilling into the bath tub and making it back into the tub where I mixed my water. So I did a 55-60% water change and threw in a dose of quick start. Since then, I've caught the puffer itching a few times and curled up against the rock once. I brought out krill (his favorite) when he was curled up and he still went crazy for it and acted completely normal. I also gave them some mysis shrimp yesterday and they both were eating.

 

[Spare time]

Try soaking his food in some API general cure and seachem focus.

 

[arcticbread]

Try soaking his food in some API general cure and seachem focus.

I'm quite new to this hobby, what would that be doing for him?

 

[sam2110]

Could be ich from the stress I've had freshwater and marine fish start rubbing themselves on the rocks and sand bed, they had no visible signs until about 24 hours after the itching started. It took another day before I could clearly see it was ich. In my most recent case it was stress of temperature drop and low KH fish was eating as normal and made a full recovery with no medication. fixed temp issue and raised the KH,
That was 6 months ago and its doing really well now, it was a yellow tang not a puffer though.

Don't no if that will help you out at all but thats my previous experience of fish itching.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hmmm....I'd suggest doing a read-through of the fish disease forum's stickies.

 

[DaddyFish]

I second the vote for early stages of Ich. Problem is that if you aren't running UV it's likely to spread to his tankmates too.
I would consider a 3-5 minute freshwater dip using the Humblefish method. Puffers are super sensitive to rapid water changes so be sure to match the temp and pH carefully.