PLEASE help. Dogface puffer not eating!!

[italquam]

Yes lockjaw would be caused by foods containing too much thiaminese, and krill is the most frequent culprit. If he seems to try and eat but seems to be missing, this might be it. Eventually they would stop trying, but this would likely be obvious before they appear to uninterested.

I never knew that about the krill , my puffer was eating a lot of krill during the summer

 

[lion king]

He has not got any better , I am going to try and pull him out of the tank this week and put him in a hospital tank .

It's been over a month, has he showed any definitive signs. Moving him to another tank without a plan of action could do more harm than good. If he has had this behavior for more than a month if there was disease present, i would think you would have seen something; stringy poo, cloudy eyes, flashing, rubbing, hanging at the top near power head flow, whiter spots, etc. A blockage would have likely killed him by now. As long as water quality checks out and you are offering a variety of foods, with no signs of disease, I'd let it ride. Sometimes there could be something going on internally that we can not know. Puffers also don't handle meds well, so if he was treated with copper or antibiotics, or came from sources running copper in their system; internal problems show up months to a year later and there is remedy for that.

 

[italquam]

It's been over a month, has he showed any definitive signs. Moving him to another tank without a plan of action could do more harm than good. If he has had this behavior for more than a month if there was disease present, i would think you would have seen something; stringy poo, cloudy eyes, flashing, rubbing, hanging at the top near power head flow, whiter spots, etc. A blockage would have likely killed him by now. As long as water quality checks out and you are offering a variety of foods, with no signs of disease, I'd let it ride. Sometimes there could be something going on internally that we can not know. Puffers also don't handle meds well, so if he was treated with copper or antibiotics, or came from sources running copper in their system; internal problems show up months to a year later and there is remedy for that.

What remedy do I use for copper , just to be safe I don't mind using one

 

[lion king]

What remedy do I use for copper , just to be safe I don't mind using one

There is no remedy. What happens that many people don't understand or just don't talk about, is that the use of many medications have consequences that appear after the completion of treatment. A fish that appears to deteriorate a year later without any source, as I said earlier, can be something internally that we don't fully understand. I have done necropsies of lions that showed liver damage after copper and antibiotic treatment, in as little as a few months to a 1.5 years later.

 

[italquam]

Unfortunately, I had bad ich over a year ago and had to use copper on the tank, it saved the tank from complete death. I am thinking this puffer was either affected by the copper or i know he used to attack food on top of the water because he couldnt wait for it to sink , sometimes i think he sucked in air, and I think he might have damaged something doing that while eating.

 

[lion king]

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Unfortunately, I had bad ich over a year ago and had to use copper on the tank, it saved the tank from complete death. I am thinking this puffer was either affected by the copper or i know he used to attack food on top of the water because he couldnt wait for it to sink , sometimes i think he sucked in air, and I think he might have damaged something doing that while eating.

It is very likely internal damage caused by the copper treatment. I have tracked dozens of incidents exactly like this to be pretty confident that is what happened. It is like clockwork when copper is used on puffers, lions, eels; to mention the ones I've studied. Triggers have a tendency to go blind. That the copper damages the liver, check out my thread "lion necropsy"" to see what I mean. Most of these fish rarely live more than a year after treatment, if they survive treatment at all.

 

[italquam]

⁶

It is very likely internal damage caused by the copper treatment. I have tracked dozens of incidents exactly like this to be pretty confident that is what happened. It is like clockwork when copper is used on puffers, lions, eels; to mention the ones I've studied. Triggers have a tendency to go blind.That the copper damages the liver, check out my thread "lion necropsy"" to see what I mean. Most of these fish rarely live more than a year after treatment, if they survive treatment at all.

do you have a link to that thread?

 

[lion king]

Im on my phone and I dont know how, just put "lion necropsy" in the search bar. That was with the use of antibiotics, I've seen copper damage much more extreme. I've even seen internal organs pretty much liquified after dying during copper treatment.

 

[italquam]

Here are some photos , he swam around today but he had that weird fungus near his mouth.

 

[italquam]

Another one

 

[lion king]

Another one

There may be alot more going on here than I understand;, to get help you need to post in the disease forum.

 

[WhiteSandsReefer]

Before giving up on the puffers, definitely try live crawfish or fidler crabs. Just clip the pinchers of first. My puffer will snub meaty foods a lot of the time. But live crustaceans, is straight candy and irresistible to him.