The Puffer Forum

No water softener, just a sure fire way to see how inaccurate a swing arm hydrometer can be. Water with the hydrometer 1.004, water with a refractometer 1.000. I might try to position the pump somewhere that the flow gets deflected instead of going straight across the tank. If that won't work then ...

I've heard that they are a bit wasteful but our LFS does sell RO for a 'fairly' reasonable price so yours might as well?

Will you be doing a trial run of your well water with aragonite or other calcium carbonate in a container to see what result you get and how quick it will act?

Happy days, i’m sure you’ll love your little puffer. The pacing is probably just a settling in thing. I wonder if you have a water softener to get a salinity reading in your tap water? My Figure 8 does like flow and he will swim through the current rather than turn into it and swim against it like m...

I’ve read in the past that it is impossible to keep a tank stable below pH 6 because the nitrifying bacteria either doesn’t operate effectively or doesn’t build up in sufficient numbers. As you say pH and hardness are generally linked but you don’t always get a high hardness with high pH and low har...

I don’t blame you they’re gorgeous little fish. You’re filter should be fine as long as it’s sized for the tank and the tank that you are taking it from has fish in it so that the nitrifying bacteria has had a constant food source - use some of the water from the filter’s tank when you swap over so ...

So you are saying that the water from your tap is pH 4.5 with 0 Degrees hardness? I’m guessing that you don’t drink your water?

The cause for the tank sticking at 0.25ppm ammonia could be that it takes around 4-6 weeks to cycle when doing a fishless cycle so it stands to reason that an overstocked tank would take longer. The fact that the tank is overstocked could also be the problem because you could be exceeding the capaci...

At SG1.003 you would need to refer to the fresh water kit. It sounds like the Fluval Cycle hasn’t worked and it does look like ammonia poisoning and unfortunately it may be too late. You could try large water changes and then add Tetra Safestart in the hope that he isn’t too far gone. The Safestart ...

Depends if the Kangaroo fights back, I bet there'd be loads of lions that wouldn't want to take on a full grown 6' male Red Kangaroo in his prime. I've seen a documentary where 1 lion killed and ate a Honey Badger, I've seen another documentary where a mother Honey Badger successfully fought off a l...

It could be the flourish if you are over-dosing but it sounds to me like a case of the fish whittling themselves down, i suspect that the least dominant fish is being chased and stressed by the more dominant one(s) and slowly weakens due to stress and less opportunities to feed.

Where were your fish during the water change if they weren’t in the tank?

I don't own a GSP but most people would recommend starting your 35 Gallon as a full salt water tank and then drip acclimate your GSP to saltwater over a number of hours, this is because salt water filtration is completely different to fresh water filtration and it will not do the GSP any harm to go ...

You'll get the hang of it in no time. Have a look at this topic: https://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19348 If you stick to 50% water changes it makes the maths more simple. Even easier if you look at the list by Dadof4 on the 6th post down in the topic. The post recommends h...

My eyes aren't as good as they were but i couldn't see any hyperventilating. Over eating can make fish breathe a lot heavier than usual so that could have been the cause.... I may be anthropomorphising but he looked a bit uncomfortable to me - does he poo regularly? If not then adding a little Epsom...

Fortunately I can't remember if my puff has ever gone on hunger strike but with other fish in the past I went the live brine shrimp, increased water changes and thorough filter clean route - but I'm sure that you keep a very clean tank. By the way that vid makes me want to go out and get him a bag o...