Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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.
OswaldPuffPuff wrote:ok so now im a little confused. i still havent put my GSP in the tank, and i decided to check the salinity once more just to make sure........ and it was 1.012......? I'm debating on whether I should but him in, because I don't want him to be shocked if there is too much salt..... what should i do?
Ok...lets try to save you some money here and some complications, at least for now. Forget about adding marine salt right now. It's not necessary at the moment, you can do that once your GSP becomes healthier and happier. The reason the SG rose is that the salt water should be mixed at least 24 hours in advance so the salt completely dissolves, so like I said, don't worry about about brackish water right now. Just work on getting him in to the 15 gallon (yes he will need a bigger tank) right now and getting it cycled.
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OswaldPuffPuff wrote:I put him in the water and his belly isn't all black still, but around his mouth it is a little. I think he's just adjusting to the new salinity, and the new setup of the tank, including the water temperature and everything else. He's swimming around, but cautiously. I think he's doing okay.
The reason he was so nice and bright and white is that there was no ammonia or nitrite in the water, he'd only been in the bowl for a short amount of time. Your ammonia test showed you this.
hmmm well he's very active now, and i will get that 15 gallon tank set up as soon as i can. but, for now do you think he will be ok? I can't get the tank set up until early next week (like monday)
My Puffers: 1 GSP (Microfiche) RIP, 1 Monotrete Turgidus (Leon) in a 30gal. 1 Monotrete suvattii in a 40 gal FW. 120 gallon BW with 3 juvenile Dragon Gobies (so cool). 55 gal with a 2" GSP named Hank. 180 gallon being set up for a Fahaka in the next few months!
OswaldPuffPuff wrote:ok so now im a little confused. i still havent put my GSP in the tank, and i decided to check the salinity once more just to make sure........ and it was 1.012......? I'm debating on whether I should but him in, because I don't want him to be shocked if there is too much salt..... what should i do?
Ok...lets try to save you some money here and some complications, at least for now. Forget about adding marine salt right now. It's not necessary at the moment, you can do that once your GSP becomes healthier and happier. The reason the SG rose is that the salt water should be mixed at least 24 hours in advance so the salt completely dissolves, so like I said, don't worry about about brackish water right now. Just work on getting him in to the 15 gallon (yes he will need a bigger tank) right now and getting it cycled.
***
OswaldPuffPuff wrote:I put him in the water and his belly isn't all black still, but around his mouth it is a little. I think he's just adjusting to the new salinity, and the new setup of the tank, including the water temperature and everything else. He's swimming around, but cautiously. I think he's doing okay.
The reason he was so nice and bright and white is that there was no ammonia or nitrite in the water, he'd only been in the bowl for a short amount of time. Your ammonia test showed you this.
hmmm well he's very active now, and i will get that 15 gallon tank set up as soon as i can. but, for now do you think he will be ok? I can't get the tank set up until early next week (like monday)
I'd get him in the 15 gallon ASAP.
"Darwin swings...annnnnnd a miss. Boy Jim, Chuck's suffered at the plate tonight. He's 0 for 3 and I'm not sure he's recovered from that shoulder pull a few weeks ago. I'll bet the front office is re-thinking that contract."
My Puffers: 1 GSP (Microfiche) RIP, 1 Monotrete Turgidus (Leon) in a 30gal. 1 Monotrete suvattii in a 40 gal FW. 120 gallon BW with 3 juvenile Dragon Gobies (so cool). 55 gal with a 2" GSP named Hank. 180 gallon being set up for a Fahaka in the next few months!
As long as you keep up the daily water changes he should, he will not be very happy at all and it can't be guaranteed, but he should. If you can get the 15 gal up sooner I'm sure he'd appreciate it.
"Darwin swings...annnnnnd a miss. Boy Jim, Chuck's suffered at the plate tonight. He's 0 for 3 and I'm not sure he's recovered from that shoulder pull a few weeks ago. I'll bet the front office is re-thinking that contract."
Dadof4 wrote:As long as you keep up the daily water changes he should, he will not be very happy at all and it can't be guaranteed, but he should. If you can get the 15 gal up sooner I'm sure he'd appreciate it.
Well Thank you I really appreciate it. Sometimes i feel so dumb because I know nothing about keeping brackish fish- it's all so new to me.
So every day a new water change? Won't that stress him out a lot?
~OswaldPuffPuff
My Puffers: 1 GSP (Microfiche) RIP, 1 Monotrete Turgidus (Leon) in a 30gal. 1 Monotrete suvattii in a 40 gal FW. 120 gallon BW with 3 juvenile Dragon Gobies (so cool). 55 gal with a 2" GSP named Hank. 180 gallon being set up for a Fahaka in the next few months!
Yes, every day. It will not stress him at all, actually you'll see an improvement in his color and activity level.
"Darwin swings...annnnnnd a miss. Boy Jim, Chuck's suffered at the plate tonight. He's 0 for 3 and I'm not sure he's recovered from that shoulder pull a few weeks ago. I'll bet the front office is re-thinking that contract."
My Puffers: Puffers I have kept: T lineatus T miurus A modestus T biocellatus C valentini C coranata C papuan C lorteti DPs suvattii burrfish T niphobles
Ammonia chips can be a very bad thing to use. They remove the ammonia from the water, so your natural bacterial never gets established, it starves and dies (if you haven't read up on cycling a tank yet, ammonia is the product of decaying food and fish waste, and is toxic to fish, bacteria changes it to nitrites which are less toxic but still bad for the fish, and another bacteria changes it to nitrates which are much more safe but can do damage to fish when they build up in large amounts, hence doing water changes to remove them).
So if you use a product that removes ammonia, that will stop the ammonia from hurting your fish but once the chips are "exhausted" or you run out, suddenly your fish is exposed to ammonia again, because there is no established bacteria to convert it. That can kill the fish. The people who make these ammonia chips love this, because you stop using their product and your fish die, so you think that you NEED their product to stop your fish from dying, when if you'd just cycled the tank properly, it would have been fine.
However, in an emergency, they can be a life saver.
I would personally consider an ill looking figure 8 puffer being kept in a tank that's way too small (2.5 gallons) to be a potential "emergency" situation, and if you have already bought them, go ahead and use them, and doing frequent water changes will help as well. This will buy you a little time so you can decide to either return him to the store or set up and cycle a more appropriate tank for him.
But in the mean time, you're going to want a larger tank for this little guy, as he's just a baby now and has a lot of growing to do. Stunting him now will do permanent lifelong damage.
Yes, you need marine salt like Instant Ocean, not aquarium salt, and its best if you can get a refractometer (more expensive but easier to use and more accurate) or a hydrometer (get one that starts at freshwater, 1.000 not higher up), but if necessary you can start out really slow and easy and just add a tablespoon or two each week (though with the 2.5 gallon tank, that might be too much, I'd worry about a bit of salt and mostly concentrate on clean water at this point in that tank).
Blood worms are a good food, but snails are the best, as puffers need crunch food to wear down their teeth.. frozen brine shrimp and krill don't really have a ton of nutritional value.. and there is a chance your frozen stuff was spoiled or just old.. but its more likely the cramped tank and poor water quality (from no water changes and overstocking) are what is making him feel yucky.
Lots of reading here for you to help you figure it out though.. we've all been there at one point or another and its how most of us learned to keep puffers.. buy the cute little thing and then realize it grows a lot bigger than we thought, needs special foods, special salt, etc etc..
Just let us know if you have any questions, and in the mean time try to keep that water nice and clean and figure out if you want to keep him or not.. if you want to keep him you'll definitely need a bigger tank and a good filter (undergravel just won't cut it).
