Hi, so I have had my new puffers for a little over a month and have never had problems in the past, or with any fish for that matter, except now I think they have Ich? Maybe... I took a picture of Harry (Don't worry I know I used the net but only for a few seconds and I gave him a small treat after for being a good boy), He hides under their bridge and never comes out anymore and he wont eat!
I'm scared haha I know it might sound funny to some but they are my babies!
sorry I don't have numbers of my water parameters, but it has been set up for a few months now and I do water changes every Monday (25%), It's set up brackish, I feed them frozen shrimp brine and recently (3 days ago) switched to live feed. (which I now think was a big mistake). I have two GSP in my tank and they get along great, no algae eaters or anything of that sort.
I have pictures but I guess they are all too big, as soon as I can make them smaller I will upload them, or if you can please email me and I can email you the pictures.
Help Please!
Forum rules
Read this before posting!!
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.
Read this before posting!!
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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SpockthePuffer
- Green Spotted Puffer
- Posts: 334
- Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2007 8:24 pm
- My Puffers: A wee GSP named Milton
- Location: Connecticut
Re: Help Please!
What size tank do you have?
You should really get a water testing kit, get one that uses liquid, not the test strips. Even though you do water changes something could still be wrong. How are you measuring your salt and what sg are you at?
Their diet should become more varied, if you go to the library on here you will find a great article on feeding. I'm not sure what you mean by "live feed" but if you mean live fish that isn't very good for your puffers, there is an article on the cons of using feeder fish too.
There is also an article on ich.
Good luck!!
Also, you can upload pictures to an image hosting site (I use imageshack) and then put them on here
You should really get a water testing kit, get one that uses liquid, not the test strips. Even though you do water changes something could still be wrong. How are you measuring your salt and what sg are you at?
Their diet should become more varied, if you go to the library on here you will find a great article on feeding. I'm not sure what you mean by "live feed" but if you mean live fish that isn't very good for your puffers, there is an article on the cons of using feeder fish too.
There is also an article on ich.
Good luck!!
Also, you can upload pictures to an image hosting site (I use imageshack) and then put them on here
"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean." - Arthur C. Clarke
~Shannon~
10g betta & snail tank, 30g GSP named Milton, 55g sw fowlr
~Shannon~
10g betta & snail tank, 30g GSP named Milton, 55g sw fowlr
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Troender
- Former Staff Member
- Posts: 1843
- Joined: Sat Nov 25, 2006 8:04 pm
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: 1x GSP (Bolla), 1x m. something. Bought as a leiurus, maybe a turgidus (Tiger), 1x c. irrubesco (Tott(a) aka Houdini) 1x c. salivator (Jack the Ripper), 1x m. cochinchinensis (Hufflepuff - R.I.P.), 2x c. lorteti (Tommy and Tigern = Calvin and Hubbes), 1x m. suvatti (Koseklumpen), 1x m. palembangensis (Dragonfly), 2x t. biocellatus (Koken and Fiken).
- Location: Askim, Norway
Re: Help Please!
We really need your water parameters, so you should get a test kit ASAP. The most important ones are NO2 (nitrite), NO3 (nitrate) and NH3 (ammonia). As Spock says, get liquid ones. They are more expensive than strips, but strips are not worth the money. They are inaccurate to say it the nice way. We also need to know the SG (the level of salt in the water).
Try to answer the questions in red above - that would help us help you.
As puffers don't have scales, they get ich easily, so you can be right there.
You also should change more water. 50 % a week is the minimum recommandation. Puffers are very sensible to bad water quality, and very messy eaters - not a good combination. They are more sensible to nitrate than many other fishes, and that's why you need to have good water change routines.
Try to answer the questions in red above - that would help us help you.
As puffers don't have scales, they get ich easily, so you can be right there.
You also should change more water. 50 % a week is the minimum recommandation. Puffers are very sensible to bad water quality, and very messy eaters - not a good combination. They are more sensible to nitrate than many other fishes, and that's why you need to have good water change routines.
Inger Anne
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider! -George Carlin
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Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider! -George Carlin
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DRRT
- Green Spotted Puffer
- Posts: 384
- Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:12 pm
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: none cuz they eat coral, so i like chase wild ones
- Location (country): USA
- Location: Honolulu, HI
Re: Help Please!
Really? That much?Troender wrote:You also should change more water. 50 % a week is the minimum recommandation. Puffers are very sensible to bad water quality, and very messy eaters - not a good combination. They are more sensible to nitrate than many other fishes, and that's why you need to have good water change routines.
But yes, please answer the questions in red and we will be able to assist you to our greatest ability.
i'm busy thinking of ways to remember what i was going to say