First puffer loss

[JessK]

Sadly my DP Hovermuffin was stuck to the intake of the filter this morning. Everything was going so well and then out of the blue she was sick and died. The wound on her face became pretty gruesome the last few days. I was dosing with the pima/mela just as the bottle said, and it looked like it was getting better and then it got a lot worse. Looked like part of her face was just caved in. I wish I knew what had happened. I still have one DP left, and am cycling a five gallon right now. I'm trying to decide if I should just tear down my 10g and put the remaining dp in the 5g, or try to get some more DPs. The DP I have left is pretty aggressive. I don't know if I should try getting two new DPs to share his tank with him. I've read that getting three puffers instead of two tends to help with the aggression. lol and the worse thing about it is that I have these two HUGE ghost shrimp that eat out of your hands that were with the peaceful puffer, so not sure how they are fitting into the picture. Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest. She was a beautiful puffer with tons of blue in her black spots and I will miss her (or maybe him lol).

[J-P]

Jess thats too bad! I know how frustrating it is to put all that effort into something and it still doesn't work out.

[DarkStorm]

sorry for your loss

[JessK]

Thanks guys. It's really sad, but I have to move on and decide what I'm going to do with my tank. I want to get the divider out of there because it doesn't make much sense to just have one dp on one side and two ghost shrimp on the other. I have a five gallon that is in the midst of cycling for a betta. I guess I will try to house the shrimp with the betta. My DP tank is way over filtered. I have 2 aquatech 5-15's on there ( one since october, one since about three weeks ago) , an internal whisper (since october) and a sponge filter rated for ten gallons that I added a week ago. Could I break down my five gallon that is cycling, wash everything and then start it up again by taking the internal filter from my 10g? or would that mess up my cycle even with all the other filtration?

[pufferpuggirl]

Very sorry for your loss, what a sad way for your puffer to go.

Are you afraid that the one lone puffer will eat those Ghost shrimp? When I had shrimp in with my DP's, the puffers would totally ignore the shrimp, and the shrimp became rather aggressive when it was feeding time, but not enough to cause any problems.

If I were you, I'd get the 10-gallon back up and get more DP's for that tank, and use the 5-gallon for quarantine, or hospital tank. I believe you will have better luck with more DP's than having only two. They seem to get a pecking order when there's a group, but as always, lots of plants are always necessary to keep down aggression and interrupt line of sight.

Good luck in whatever you choose to do!

[autophotos]

ive not long put a shrimp - ghost/glass/ i dunno what he is in with 17 dps - hes bouncing around all over them - hes real funny - the dps are scared of him

[eieio]

When I had shrimp in with my DP's, the puffers would totally ignore the shrimp, and the shrimp became rather aggressive when it was feeding time, but not enough to cause any problems.

exact same here!