The Puffer Forum

Hi guys, kind of not new but now feeling new to the world of puffers.

I had 2 Dwarf Puffers, currently I only have one. The other one, my first one named Puffer (not too creative with names xD) just died this morning. I've had him just over a year. He's pretty much the reason that pushed me to join a forum to educate myself more on puffers. My other one, Olive, is a female that I've had for 3 months and is currently living with 2 ottos in a 41L tank. I hope to get along with everyone and learn from everyone's knowledge and different experiences.

Mochi :>

Sorry for your loss.
Can you tell us more about your setup?

Hi,thank you. I have them in a Ecostyle 47 tank with the filter it came with. I have a mix of real and fake plants in for a lot of hiding spots. A few plastic decorative pieces here and there with black sand as substrate.

I did a water test the morning I found him and resulted in pH 7.6 Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrates all zeros. I do a weekly water change of 25% to 50%. I feed them a mix of frozen bloodworms with brine shrimp but they tend to eat more of my live whiteworms I also give in between. I have some ramshorn snails in my tank but they've never paid enough attention to them.

I've recently purchased some Java moss and a little java fern to keep as well.

It sounds like you are taking good care of them, although a cycled tank should be showing some nitrate. Was this test done after you changed the water?

Actually yes. My sister just started a brine shrimp hatchery so when she had some we tried giving a bit to the puffers. It was only after that, late on in the afternoon and the day after that I noticed he was hiding a lot in his cave or the plants, in the places they normally slept in. So I thought he must be feeling the salt , though the brine shrimps were rinsed and it was a small portion. I changed the water nevertheless just to be safe. This was the afternoon before I found him.

Granted, every since he was young I noticed that he was always paler in color in normal situations then his spots darken when he's stressed ( aka when I'm cleaning) where based on what I've read online it was the other way around, They're normally bright in color then pale out when sick or stressed. But he swims okay and eats happily so I took it as his individual characteristic. But now I'm thinking he could have had a weaker immunity or something.

PS, I bought two more puffers. They're getting along with olive, one I'm hoping is a female and one male so in total I'll have 2:1 female to male. They do this interesting stare down swim around each other and they're group together most of the time, it's very interesting. Where when I first introduced Olive and Puffer they never showed this behaviour.