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UPDATE! New pictures and final update from us added 7th June. 2005 Click here.
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As is well known on this forum, we have a Fahaka Pufferfish called Martha whom we bought at three inches in August 2004.
Martha is now pushing eight inches and is as fat as mud.
Today we re-visited the store where Martha came from and found that most of her tank mates are still there..and still two to three inches long.
Clearly the store has no clue as to how to keep Fahakas, how aggresive & competative they are, and how much food they require.
There were about eight of them in a 20 gallon tank, all were quite thin, but reasonably healthy looking... except one.
This poor little chap was so thin we could see his ribs & the shape of his skull. The skin was hanging on him in folds where he's just wasting away. He's barely two inches long, has bites taken from his tailfin and one pectoral fin and has a touch of ick.
I called for the manager of the store and spent twenty minutes giving him a piece of my mind and a crash course in puffer husbandry. I likened the poor thing to a puppy that was left to starve because it's siblings ate all it's food. I asked him if he thought that that would be acceptable. He agreed that it wasn't, and promised to spend more time making sure that each fish got enough to eat.
He thanked me for bringing it to his attention.
I offered to take on the sickly fish and he agreed.. obviously I wasn't going to pay for it, but I guess it was no loss to him as it would have died anyway.
So now we have a second fahaka puffer. God knows what we're going to do with him if he survives, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, for now it's just one day at a time. He's in our hospital tank right now, and has already eaten a river shrimp that was bigger than him. Already his belly looks more rounded and he's perked up. Fingers crossed.
Here he is with an AA battery for size reference.
This is after his shrimp dinner.
And a picture of Martha, who came from the same batch of fish four months ago with the same AA battery for comparison.
UPDATE! New pictures added 17th May. 2005 Click here.
UPDATE! New pictures and final update from us added 7th June. 2005 Click here.
---------------------------------------------------------
As is well known on this forum, we have a Fahaka Pufferfish called Martha whom we bought at three inches in August 2004.
Martha is now pushing eight inches and is as fat as mud.
Today we re-visited the store where Martha came from and found that most of her tank mates are still there..and still two to three inches long.
Clearly the store has no clue as to how to keep Fahakas, how aggresive & competative they are, and how much food they require.
There were about eight of them in a 20 gallon tank, all were quite thin, but reasonably healthy looking... except one.
This poor little chap was so thin we could see his ribs & the shape of his skull. The skin was hanging on him in folds where he's just wasting away. He's barely two inches long, has bites taken from his tailfin and one pectoral fin and has a touch of ick.
I called for the manager of the store and spent twenty minutes giving him a piece of my mind and a crash course in puffer husbandry. I likened the poor thing to a puppy that was left to starve because it's siblings ate all it's food. I asked him if he thought that that would be acceptable. He agreed that it wasn't, and promised to spend more time making sure that each fish got enough to eat.
He thanked me for bringing it to his attention.
I offered to take on the sickly fish and he agreed.. obviously I wasn't going to pay for it, but I guess it was no loss to him as it would have died anyway.
So now we have a second fahaka puffer. God knows what we're going to do with him if he survives, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, for now it's just one day at a time. He's in our hospital tank right now, and has already eaten a river shrimp that was bigger than him. Already his belly looks more rounded and he's perked up. Fingers crossed.
Here he is with an AA battery for size reference.
This is after his shrimp dinner.
And a picture of Martha, who came from the same batch of fish four months ago with the same AA battery for comparison.
UPDATE! New pictures added 17th May. 2005 Click here.
He's lucky though, probably better off than his siblings atleast 
Good luck with him 
Maybe you can get him/her up to good health and give it to a good fishkeeper who could take care of it 
Hope all goes well with his recovery! 
