Puffer and Tang have a cloudy eye

rdfriend

rdfriend

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Sep 9, 2007
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Seminole, Fl.
I just noticed tonight that my two newest fish, naso and dog face puffer, each have a cloudy left eye and it's apparent that neither can see well if at all out of it. I did some google research and found that it may be a bacterial infection. I also read that in most cases it is caused by trauma to the eye so I am wondering what the heck is going on. The other two inhabitants are a taomato clown and dragon wrasse that just showed up after 3 days MIA although he could have been coming out while I haven't been around. Anybody have any thoughts on this? I am including pics but they aren't that great and the puffer was hard to get since now instead of looking straight at me he wants to keep his good eye toward the glass. I guess I will start setting up a quarantine tank first thing in the morning.

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If it is just one eye on each fish that is cloudy and not any other parts of the body, I'd leave it be for now. Most minor one-eye infections go away on their own. If you notice it significantly worsen or spread, then you may want to treat. Otherwise, leave them be. More than likely, it is from a slight scrape at some time or another.
 
Actually, now it looks like it has spread to the other eye on the tang. Do you think that may mean it is parasitic? What about a freshwater dip?
 
How does the rest of the fish look? Again, if it hasn't spread to the rest of the body, hold off on doing any significant treatment. Freshwater dips aren't really effective against most protozoan and bacterial infections. Unless we can narrow things down and be as specific as possible, I can't recommend much other than waiting it out and making sure the fish eat well/are comfortable, etc.
 
I thought I would update this post. I appreciate your advise Amphiprion and I did let it slide for a few days but both just seemed to get worse and then the puffer died. I was sad as he had immediately became a favorite but did not want to lose my tang also so I did a freshwater dip on him and I'll be damned if I didn't see a couple of white scabby looking spots pop out and fall off of his worse eye. He recovered and seems as healthy as he can be now. I don't really believe it would have helped the puffer as he was much worse and I think he was sick at the lfs before I brought him home as Amp had indicated in a different post about him having problems in the water flow. Thanks again for that insight! So anyway, to ease the sadness I went out and bought another DFP about twice as big as the last and quarantined him. Over a couple of days he seemed a bit stressed and I was having to do double 50% water changes twice a day for high ammonia levels. (Is that normal?) So after 3 days I went ahead and acclimated him to the main tank and after over a week now all is well so far. He is eating and has even learned that when the food starts coming he parks himself in the flow and just waits for it to come. I will take some updated pics and post as soon as i get the chance.
 
The high ammonia will be constant if the tank is too small. You have to have a proportionally larger QT for larger fish. A good, efficient filter helps, as well, since there is no other source of filtration in a QT setup. I am sorry to hear about the pufferfish. I did suspect other problems, though. I am glad, however, that the tang pulled through. Keep a close eye on everything in the meantime.
 
I was only using a 10g tank with an Aquaclear 20 filter running with just the foam pad and the bio-max material that I keep in the sump of my main tank. The puffer is between 4 and 5 inches so the tank may have been a bit small. I do have a 30g Eclipse 3 setup that I am thinking about tearing down to downsize due to the economy. My electric bill last month was almost $500 and that was without running any heat or air on a 1,600 sq. ft. home so I am sure that having 3 tanks, 125, 56 and 30 with chillers, pumps, powerheads, skimmers, etc. is a big part of that. So anyway, that would give me a bigger qt tank and would allow me to add more liverock from the 30 into the sump of my big tank without having to purchase more. Then when I get around to making a sump for the 56 I could steal some of that also. Speaking of that, I know it is a change of topic but would it matter if I just added the LR in whole pieces to the sump or would it be more beneficial to break it up into rubble?
 
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