The Puffer Forum

Hey everyone,

I'm the proud owner of a Tetraodon Leiurus. Had him for 3 or so months now.

Recently he has been doing some strange choking. You can actually hear it pretty good. He will contract his throat and just make like a choking sound or like something stuck and just swims along like nothings wrong.

He's eating well, his poop is black ish and he is as curious as ever...but im not sure if its anything to worry about..

Anyone have any ideas?

Anyone?

I'm not familiar with this but it would helpful for you to answer ALL the questions above, in red.

Hey,

Sure!

1.
Aquarium:
Gh: 10
Kh: 4
Ph: about 6.8
NH3: 0,0 mg/l
NO3: +- 5 mg/l
NO2: 0,0 mg/l
PO4: 0,0 mg/l

Tapwater kitchen:
Gh: 8
Kh: 8
Ph: 8
NH3: 0 mg/l
NO3: +- 5mg/l
NO2: 0 mg/l
PO4: 0 mg/l

Tapwater bathroom:
Gh: 8
Kh: 7
Ph: 8
NH3: 0,0 mg/l
NO3: +- 5 mg/
NO2: 0,0 mg/l
PO4: 0,0 mg/l

2. Its a Juwel Rio 180 with after sand etc is about 150L?

3. I feed my puffer every other day with either shrimp, worms, cockles, mussles and once in a blue moon a live fish gutfed from one of my other tanks.
Water change I do about 50% weekly based on the instruction of Dennerle scaperscreen.

Things ive added and or use are Dennerle Scapersscreen fert, Sera Kh/Ph minus, pressurised co2 about 60bpm, Dupla No3/Po3 drops since aparently the fert doesnt have those and lastly I added liquid carbon sometimes back when I had blackbeard algae. Which has almost died off now.

4. I Recently added 2 sorts of plants to the tank since the old ones died off for some reason. I added Valisneria Gigantea and Cryptocoryne wendtii green. I also did a treatment of kh/ph minus as my gh and kh both were 9. And today I added Purigen to my external filter.

5. The aquarium has been running since May 2018. I ran a fishless cycle with just plants and substrate etc for 3 weeks. I went through the no2 spike and started with a few fish one week and a few more the week after. Untill I ended up changing the tank and took out the internal Juwel filter and LEDs and attached a Eheim experience 350 filter and Aquatlantis Easy LEDs with Luminus controllers.

Stop adding chemicals to change your pH. Fish don't read pH & the swings up & down are way more harmful to your fish than having an "unnatural" level. I'm wondering if all those fertilizers are causing issues?

Yea very possible. Im receiving my all in one fert today. Replacing all the other stuff.

But reducing the Ph is very important for my tank as the tapwater is 8 which is way too high for the puffer. If not adding chemicals how would I reduce that? I know co2 lowers it a little bit but not enough.

Puffers don't read pH & really aren't bothered by it. Better to just keep it stable. If you really do want to lower it & keep stable, you can add peat to your filter.

Bulletfishy wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:31 am Yea very possible. Im receiving my all in one fert today. Replacing all the other stuff.

But reducing the Ph is very important for my tank as the tapwater is 8 which is way too high for the puffer. If not adding chemicals how would I reduce that? I know co2 lowers it a little bit but not enough.

A pH of 8 is fine for a Leiurus, but the swings are dangerous. However, if you want to lower the pH permanently, you would need to first reduce your kH by adding a little bit of distilled water with each water change. As your kH falls, your pH will too. Do this EXTREMELY GRADUALLY though, and frankly I think that you would be better off leaving it alone.

O really? So 25% ish water change weekly, adding the new all in one fert and co2 and just leave it at that is gonna be ok? Just to confirm

Bulletfishy wrote: ↑Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:06 pm O really? So 25% ish water change weekly, adding the new all in one fert and co2 and just leave it at that is gonna be ok? Just to confirm

That sounds good. I'm not sure if you knew, but CO2 will actually lower the kH and thus pH slightly. Once again, just make sure that the CO2 levels stay as consistent as possible all the time, and good luck!