Porcupine Fish stressed presumably due to Nitrate spike.

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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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Nickdavey126
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Joined: Tue May 22, 2018 5:49 am
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Porcupine Fish stressed presumably due to Nitrate spike.

Post by Nickdavey126 »

1: water parameters
Ph:8.3
Salinity: 1.023
Ammonia 0 , Nitrite 0, Nitrates 40: unable to detect
2: 75 gallon (I understand this is a bit small for a Porcupine Fish, but it’s only about 4inches so I thought it would be fine for a start) Inhabitants: Porcupine Fish, 2 Blue Legged Hermit Crabs
3: Food: Shrimp, Squid, Nightcrawlers, Clams, Octopus, Cuttlefish.
Salt/water and Waterchanges: Instant Ocean for full water changes, “Real Pacific Ocean water” by Imagintarium for partial water changes which occur every week (Saturdays)
4: I shifted the rocks around a bit, but not much.
5:The aquarium has been running for a total of 6 months.
*If I missed anything or have any advice to help improve my care please let me know *

Hello, my fish was doing fine all last week and then I noticed it kind of changed behavior on 2/27 but was still eating , and then on 2/28 (yesterday) I noticed that it would not accept food and was breathing a bit fast with its mouth open swimming around in a dazed sort of way. I then did a water test as I thought my Nitrate may have spiked and as the results of the test shown Nitrate was up about 40ppm. I suddenly then did a water change about 40% and left the fish alone to hopefully destress, but going back to check on it this morning it seems to be in the same sort of condition. Is it possible I did to big of a water change and shocked it ? I didn’t think it would as I do water changes weekly but this seems to be what may have happened. Should I do another water change today ? I’m not exactly sure what had occurred but I’m assuming it’s due to feeding to much and forgetting to clean the l filter out last week. Would it be beneficial to add and aerator to the aquarium ? I will also like to mention I did add a dose to sea Chem prime the day prior tooI’m not sure if that was good to do or not. Any advice will be helpful , thank you so much !
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Re: Porcupine Fish stressed presumably due to Nitrate spike.

Post by Pufferpunk »

What filtration are you using? How many lbs live rock? Protein skimmer, powerheads?
When you say, "full" WC, how much is that?
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
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