Today i decided to take the 3inchs of sand out my 350gallon tank (thats one lot of sand) becouse all the sand was scratching the tank as it would get in the middle of the magnet cleaner. So i put my 2ft blue arowana and my 14inch mbu in a 3ft x 2ft x 2ft plastic box with a maxi jet 600 to keep the water circulated and airated. So both fish were in there for about 2 hours and both were fine so after removing the sand and refilling the tank with 50% tap water and 50% tank water i went and put the mbu in a bucket of water (being careful not to let his mouth out the water so he couldnt blow him self up with air) but he jumpt out the bucket and guess what, he blew him self up with air which is 10x worse than blowing them selves up with water as air pockets can form in the mbus stomach and can be very to get back out of the fish.
So i put him in the tank gently massaging his tummy to release the air and i was quit successful in doing so but there was one part on the side of his tummy that i could not get out. I let him out of my hands to see how he would be but he would would float up on the side very stongly as he had a ping pong ball size air pocket in him. I supported him for a hour but there was no change to his health, i thought he was dead on several occasions but i would touch his eye to see if had any reflexes which he did. But eventually his eyes turned blood shot and he was gone, this is a lesson learnt on my part to keep all puffers in water at ALL times.
So i put him in the tank gently massaging his tummy to release the air and i was quit successful in doing so but there was one part on the side of his tummy that i could not get out. I let him out of my hands to see how he would be but he would would float up on the side very stongly as he had a ping pong ball size air pocket in him. I supported him for a hour but there was no change to his health, i thought he was dead on several occasions but i would touch his eye to see if had any reflexes which he did. But eventually his eyes turned blood shot and he was gone, this is a lesson learnt on my part to keep all puffers in water at ALL times.
I have had good luck holding the puffer by the tail, head vertical (under water at all times) & shake the puffer back & forth (pretty hard).
