New Dwarf puffers lethargic, not eating.

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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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adevereux
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New Dwarf puffers lethargic, not eating.

Post by adevereux »

I have 2 Dwarf Puffer fish I brought home 3 days ago. I'm concerned as they are not interested the frozen blood worms I'm giving them and their rather lethargic, not swimming around much. My tank is a fluval edge 6 gallon and the Pufffers are the only fish in this tank. My ammonia and nitrites are fine, the nitrates are at 5.0. I ordered some ramshorn snails off of ebay which should be here in a couple of days but should I be concerned with them not eating? Should I try and feed them something else before snails arrive? Is there lack of swimming around normal for being in a new tank? Also, I ordered these from my LFS which they had to order from their supplier as they don't stock these in the store. Apparently they arrived Thursday night and when I picked them up on Friday at around 5pm they were still in the small shipping bag. I thought that was a bit crazy that the store left them in the bag for so long. If anyone has any suggestions or information on this, I would appreciate it.
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Pufferpunk
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Re: New Dwarf puffers lethargic, not eating.

Post by Pufferpunk »

By "fine", do you mean 0? How was the tank cycled? Try live worms, that's all mine will eat--spoiled brats!

If they were still in that shipping bag, they may have ensued permanent damage to their respiratory systems, from ammonia poisoning. :(
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

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Myaj
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Re: New Dwarf puffers lethargic, not eating.

Post by Myaj »

In my experience, dwarf puffers are the most picky eaters of all the puffer species. I put mine in a heavily planted tank that had a well established red cherry shrimp and ramshorn snail population, and I also had a supplier for live blackworms lined up. They never accepted any sort of dead or pelleted food, even frozen bloodworms, they would much prefer to hunt for food themselves. Red cherry shrimp breed very easily, so consider raising those, or ask your LFS if they sell live blackworms or know anyone that does.

I personally don't suggest putting dwarf puffers into anything BUT an already established, planted tank with a lot of live goodies for them to hunt.. for the reason that they often won't eat anything else.
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adevereux
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Re: New Dwarf puffers lethargic, not eating.

Post by adevereux »

Thanks for the replies. I think I'm in for a battle with these guys as far as eating goes. I think I'll try the shrimp approach but these puffers are very very tiny...they look like they were just born a couple of days ago so I'm not sure if they'll be able to take on anything too big. I saw some ghost shrimp that looked pretty small, I may try those. Another issue is all those frozen bloodworms that the puffers didnt eat, should i be cleaning them up daily? Do you think a Corydora would be okay to put in the tank with them to at all the leftovers?
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Myaj
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Re: New Dwarf puffers lethargic, not eating.

Post by Myaj »

Yes, you should be cleaning up the uneaten food. Corydoras are armored catfish, BUT dwarf puffers are mean little suckers that can and will nip fish to death. Corys are so sweet and have no sense of territory that they'd probably often wander into their way. The shrimp will do clean up work for you, so that's an added bonus, but you'll have to give them lots of hiding places like wood pieces and heavy planting or the puffers will kill and eat them all right away.
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