so as the title says we a have a fish with no fins at all. It's a spiny box puffer. He got mauled by a porcupine puffer. Will he live? If needed we will hand feed and dose meds when and if needed. Thanks..
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Yea, he is by his self in a ten gallon tank with only a hang on filter and a air stone. He absolutely has not one strand of a fin, so taking pics is moot.I believe the best chance he has is if he can put in a separate quarantine tank that can be medicated with antibiotics and can have a lower salinity.
The treatments I would recommend include hyposalinity and maracyn 2. Dropping salinity to 1.010(ish) helps slightly reduce physical stress on the fish as their internal osmotic balance is lower than typical seawater and their organs will have to work less hard to maintain this balance if the surrounding water is at a lower salinity. The maracyn 2 would be to help prevent infections in the open wounds.
Flow in the QT should be quite low to help prevent the puffer from being blown around the tank, adding additional stress.
To be quite honest I don't think the chances of recovery are all that high if he really has no fins whatsoever left but I wouldn't give up on him just yet.
I really don't know? I have almost every med known to mankind. I just have never had a fish with just a body.Do you want this moved to the Fish Disease and Treatment forum, for a run down on medicinal treatment?
Dropping salinity to 1.010(ish) helps slightly reduce physical stress on the fish as their internal osmotic balance is lower than typical seawater and their organs will have to work less hard to maintain this balance if the surrounding water is at a lower salinity.
Me either!!I had no idea...
It might be actually I'll have to look at him in a min but the big puffer literally grabbed him by his back tail fin and started trying to rip it off.But its tail fin looks like it's down to the meat.
I had no idea...
Yeah he's moving around slowly but at least he's moving and he pecks at the rocks on the bottom. We're going to try and feed him soon and see if he try's to eat.If the puffer is able to move around a little on his own he has a much better chance than I was originally thinking. It'll take a couple weeks but as others have stated it's possible that he may regenerate a decent portion of each of his fins, enough that he could live a full and mostly normal life once he adapts.
Again, the main concern I would have at this point is preventing infection with an antibiotic and making sure that he continues eating.
It's a slight (and often overlooked) benefit of hyposalinity but the majority of the time hypo is used for treating external parasites. Whenever I'm quarantining a sick fish I do hyposalinity at 1.012 as a precaution against parasitic infections and to help lower stress.