Who Gives A Fish Forums

About 6 weeks ago, my spiny and dog face puffers, plus my Emperor angelfish, stopped eating altogether. I'm pretty sure it was a GI infection from some bad frozen food. After a 7-day course of antibiotics, they slowly started to recover and eat again. But then, the stress from all that brought on the ich. We did a week of hyposalinity and formulin treatments, but sadly, my angel didn't make it. The puffers were on the mend, the ich was in remission, and things were looking up.

That's when I noticed my dog face puffer's eyes turned cloudy - not the usual ich cloudiness, but a weird, hazy film covering both eyes, kinda like when a fish has been dead for a while. So I isolated him in a separate tank (it's been 2 days now), still with hyposalinity, and added flagyl and melafix. He's also developed this super slimy coat, with globs of slime all over his body, in the tank, and on the bottom of the tank. I'm stumped on what's causing the cloudy eyes or the slime. There's hardly any ich left on him, if any. My water parameters are all good, except for the hyposalinity, and his breathing is a bit labored.

Any advice or ideas would be really appreciated.

Quarantining was a good call. I've had puffers get slimy when they're feeling lazy, but not to the extent you're describing. One possibility is gill flukes, which can cause eye haze and labored breathing. I've never had a fish recover from gill flukes, unfortunately.

You might consider trying a freshwater bath every now and then. This involves filling a bowl with pH and heat-adjusted RO water that matches the tank, large enough for the puffer to swim in for a few minutes. Place the fish in the RO water and monitor it closely to prevent jumping. This is the only non-toxic treatment I know for gill flukes, but it's unlikely to work if the infestation is too severe. There are also medications available, but I don't have a specific brand to recommend. Make sure to treat the hospital tank to eliminate any free-swimming parasites.

Hopefully this helps, and good luck with your dog face puffer.

Thanks for the advice. After digging deep, I decided to try cupramine treatments on my puffer, in addition to the flagyl. I know, I know, most people advise against using copper products on puffers, but this little guy was in a bad way. Surprisingly, the hyper slime coat has already started to clear up after just two days of cupramine. Tomorrow, I'll be removing him from the copper-containing water and continuing with the flagyl and hyposalinity. Tonight, though, was a bit of a disaster - I was working around the tank and he got really spooked, flew into the heat/filter intake and scraped himself up. This was totally out of character for him; normally, he'd swim right up to my hand and curl up for a snooze.