Newly adopted GSP help

[jmscharf]

Hi I recently adopted two GSP's. I am not an experienced fish owner and I know this is a major no no with these hard to care for fish. However I did lots of reading and thought I was up to the challenge. However when I first moved the tank to my house and set it up. I set up the filter wrong and it wasn't sucking water out of tank. I left the fish for a few hours with some blood worms that i didn't know i had to rinse before i fed them to them. The fish suffered ammonia poisoning. One of the GSP's went almost catatonic. However my roomate and I changed out most of the water and cleaned out the tank very good. Including all poo and left over blood worm bits. The fish almost got back to their normal state. I stayed up all night checking on them every couple of hours. They had white bellies most of the evening. In the morning they had dark grey bellies. Not quite fully black. Clearly stressed.

Early this morning I went to the local pet store and pick up an ammonia water treatment product with very vague directions. i also pick up ph stripes from a hardware store. Which are not for fish use. Could the ink from these hurt the puffers? I used a few throughout the day. I changed the water again, increased the salt in the tank very slightly (.01) and added the treatment. After two hours they looked healthy and almost back to normal. I rinsed some blood worms some of the tank water and tried to fed them to the fish. However they refused the food. So I fed them snails instead and cleaned the worms out of the tank after half an hour of them sitting there. I checked on them two hours later and the were turning dark gray/ black again. So I added more of the treatment about an hour ago. I think I just need to lower the ammonia more then I did initially. I only moved it down one bar the first time on the strip. The smaller GSP was glass surfing and sort of hitting his head against objects.

I'm worried. I hope they will recover. Can any of you please offer me some advice? They are clearly not used to their new surroundings and the water being changing so much is clearly stressing them out. I am going to try to lower the ammonia all the way and try to maintain this current water for at least a couple of days. Will that do the trick?

[bertie 83]

What salinity were they in prior to you taking them? What salinity are they at now? What are the results from a full water test? No ammonia is safe. Do you have prime? If so double dose the tank immediately and prepare for many water changes

[jmscharf]

I just did another 50 percent water change. i bought some prime and added the recommended dosage. right now the salinity is 1.012. the previous owner had them at 1.011. they appear to be happy and doing well. i am going to do a full water test since i just bought a kit for that and i will post the numbers.

[Pufferpunk]

How was this tank cycled? Did you buy a liquid test kit? What is this ammonia removing chemical you are adding?

[sgtmyers88]

Check out this article and get a bottle ASAP. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=32416 The SafeStart will work in Brackish.

[Pufferpunk]

Add Safestart directly to your filter, after a 90% water change. Stop adding anything but Prime.