The Puffer Forum

My girl got me a couple of juvenile GSPs (about 1 in. long) from Walmart a couple weeks ago. She thought they were cute and the salesperson simply told her they were freshwater fish and could be fed only flakes. I know she had good intentions of course, but I was surprised when I did some on-the-spot research and found that they required a bit more care than expected. My family used to breed angelfish as somewhat of a hobby, but we sold almost all of our aquarium supplies a long time ago. As we didn't have any tanks left, I went out and got a 10-gallon starter kit to keep them in temporarily. Because this whole thing was rather sudden and I wanted to quickly get the puffers out of the bowl I received them in, I didn't cycle the tank before putting them in. I've been feeding them frozen bloodworms almost every day, about a fifth of a cube or until their bellies stick out a little bit. I haven't given them snails yet, although my uncle has some pest snails from his aquariums ready for me to pick up. I did a water change (about 70%) 8 days after I got them (a week ago) and I'm going to do another one tomorrow. I've also been testing the water with ammonia test strips which read it as "safe", approximately .5 ppm. I didn't pick up any other test kits yet, so I'm afraid that's all the information I have on the water quality. I haven't begun increasing the salinity of the water either; I figured that I could keep it fresh for now because they are young. Yesterday I added 1 teaspoon of Amquel+ in case the ammonia was a problem. (Is that stuff supposed to smell that bad?) They are still in the 10-gallon (by themselves) with a half-dozen fake plants, a hollow plastic log, and a couple of airstones. I'm using some old (clean) gravel I found in our remaining aquarium supplies, although I have read that they should have a finer substrate like sand. My uncle has plenty of extra tanks as well, so I was hoping I could find a ~30-gallon in his storage.

So my GSPs seem to have been doing fine for the past couple weeks, but last night they seemed more restless than usual and weren't as interested in eating. Instead of glass surfing along the sides like they usually do they kept swimming along the glass at the surface of the water. When I put the bloodworms in they didn't even seem to notice, which was highly unusual. Tonight they were a little more interested in the worms; they ignored them when I poured a few in but when I dipped the little container in the water they both noticed and swam in and started eating. Their colors are paler as well; the spots are standing out a lot more. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing, but it seems like a rather abrupt change and I wanted to get it checked out. I'm thinking it may be the Amquel because I had added it just before this started happening, but correlation isn't necessarily causation. Any ideas on what's going on with them?

Also, any tips on overall care would be greatly appreciated. I'm still pretty clueless and would prefer not to be a terrible pet owner. I really don't want these little guys to die, they mean a lot to me!

Green spotted puffers are predators so they like to hunt, I usually drop a cube of frozen blood worms and leave them at the bottom of the tank to feed and scavenge.

Also if they aren't eating than I'd recommend starving them for a few days.



Color discoloration could be because the puffer is bored as well as the toxins they release after eating arnt getting filtered out of the water.

Id get them into a bigger tank Stat and make sure it has good filtration to pull out and clean the toxins.

After reading other posts I've decided to do a 40% water change every week in my 55 gallon tank I feel like my puffers after the water changes need time to readjust to the change of water ect.