My Gsp's belly turned black
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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Miller535
- Dwarf Puffer
- Posts: 78
- Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 10:07 pm
- My Puffers: 2 f8's. Have also kept dp's and gsp's
- Location (country): Usa
My Gsp's belly turned black
I had a GSP that started to get some black around his mouth and then started acting funny. A few days later his whole stomach tuned black and he died. Anyone have any ideas what happened? I changed the water every week. Kept the Sg at 1.012. Fed him every day.
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Brandon8521
- Fahaka Puffer
- Posts: 824
- Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 9:41 pm
- Location (country): Usa
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
What were the rest of your water parameters?
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Little_grey_puffer
- Puffer Fry
- Posts: 13
- Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2009 6:53 pm
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: 2x Green spot puffers
1x Immaculate puffer
1x Arothron manilensis
1x Arothron hispidus - Location (country): England, Southport
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
How did your puffer act funny? Was it flicking against objects in the tank? Not eating?
When puffers darken in colour it is usualy in response to stress.
Or sometimes when they sleep.
How much tank water did you change a week and how did you clean the filter medium (sponge).
When puffers darken in colour it is usualy in response to stress.
Or sometimes when they sleep.
How much tank water did you change a week and how did you clean the filter medium (sponge).
In an aquarium far far away... was a little grey puffer...
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Flaring Afro
- Puffer Fry
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Wed May 19, 2010 11:19 pm
- Location (country): USA
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
Also, what were you feeding him? Did he look chubby or fat or was his stomach skinny?
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Miller535
- Dwarf Puffer
- Posts: 78
- Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 10:07 pm
- My Puffers: 2 f8's. Have also kept dp's and gsp's
- Location (country): Usa
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
I had him in a 10 gallon tank with two figure eight puffers. Was just going to leave them in there untill I got a bigger tank. I bought the Gsp first and then about a week later the two figure eights. As soon as the figure eights were in the tank the Gsp hid all the time instead of being very active like he use to be. I do about a 25% water change about every four to five days. Change nyy filter cartridge every other week. Have kept the tank at a stable 80 degrees. Sg 1.012. Not sure the nitrite or naitrate or ammonia levels but they have to be low as often as I am doing water changes. I use both Amquel products as dechol. Instant ocean for salt. Theres nothing lese living in the tank other then two olive nerite snails that were suppose to be food that none of them wanted. The Gsp use to hide and lay on the aragonite sand alot which I thought was weird. From the aragonite my ph is a stable 8.0. Have not been able to get themm to eat snails so I have been feeding them frozen crill and earth worms from a bait shop.
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Dadof4
- Tech Team
- Posts: 2862
- Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:50 am
- Gender: Male
- 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!
- Location (country): United States
- Location: North Wisconsin
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
The nitrates were probably high. Three puffers in a tank that is 1/3 the size a GSP requires would have had a big nitrate build with water changes of 25% every 4-5 days. These guys are huge waste producers. Also on a tank that size if you were running a standard filter for a 10 gallon it was probably not enough to keep your water parameters where they needed to be, not enough surface area or water turnover. How was the tank cycled prior to the F8's? One last thing is that with the 3 fish in that small of a tank the GSP was probably getting really stressed from crowding on top of the water conditions.Miller535 wrote:I had him in a 10 gallon tank with two figure eight puffers. Was just going to leave them in there untill I got a bigger tank. I bought the Gsp first and then about a week later the two figure eights. As soon as the figure eights were in the tank the Gsp hid all the time instead of being very active like he use to be. I do about a 25% water change about every four to five days. Change nyy filter cartridge every other week. Have kept the tank at a stable 80 degrees. Sg 1.012. Not sure the nitrite or naitrate or ammonia levels but they have to be low as often as I am doing water changes. I use both Amquel products as dechol. Instant ocean for salt. Theres nothing lese living in the tank other then two olive nerite snails that were suppose to be food that none of them wanted. The Gsp use to hide and lay on the aragonite sand alot which I thought was weird. From the aragonite my ph is a stable 8.0. Have not been able to get themm to eat snails so I have been feeding them frozen crill and earth worms from a bait shop.
"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."
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Miller535
- Dwarf Puffer
- Posts: 78
- Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 10:07 pm
- My Puffers: 2 f8's. Have also kept dp's and gsp's
- Location (country): Usa
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
I have a penguin 200 on the tank. So thats pumping 200gph and am using a nitra zorb pouch. But they are deffinetly messy and waste producers. They leave alot of waiste from eating every day. They like what they like and they leave the rest.
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Dadof4
- Tech Team
- Posts: 2862
- Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:50 am
- Gender: Male
- 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!
- Location (country): United States
- Location: North Wisconsin
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
I wasn't trying to be snarky with that last post (sorry, I just re-read it and thought it sounded that way...I can take a little getting used to 
) I was trying to throw out some suggestions. You have great water turnover and the filter surface area is pretty good. The Nitrazorb works but only to a point, they have a fairly rapid saturation rate but in that crowded of a tank it can help a bit. I think the major factors that leaves then is crowding (territorial stress), a possible mini cycle of the filter and the puffer didn't like the water conditions that caused, and some other disease process. GSP's are all wild caught and IP's come as a standard feature on most models, they can kill the fish when they get in a stressed condition....one last thought for now is with the mildly elevated temp and the stocking amount there may have been some oxygen delpetion (oxygen doesn't dissolve as readily in elevated temps) and the GSP may have been the one that suffered the effects. Or we could get real wild and call it a combination of all of the above 
.
) I was trying to throw out some suggestions. You have great water turnover and the filter surface area is pretty good. The Nitrazorb works but only to a point, they have a fairly rapid saturation rate but in that crowded of a tank it can help a bit. I think the major factors that leaves then is crowding (territorial stress), a possible mini cycle of the filter and the puffer didn't like the water conditions that caused, and some other disease process. GSP's are all wild caught and IP's come as a standard feature on most models, they can kill the fish when they get in a stressed condition....one last thought for now is with the mildly elevated temp and the stocking amount there may have been some oxygen delpetion (oxygen doesn't dissolve as readily in elevated temps) and the GSP may have been the one that suffered the effects. Or we could get real wild and call it a combination of all of the above ."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."
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Brandon8521
- Fahaka Puffer
- Posts: 824
- Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2010 9:41 pm
- Location (country): Usa
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
How did you cycle the tank? I have never used a penguin filter but is there a bio sponge that stays in the filter when you change out the cartridge? If not then your dumping your bacteria everytime you change your filter. I would highly suggest you get a liquid test kit i use API and it works great and easy to use.
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Miller535
- Dwarf Puffer
- Posts: 78
- Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 10:07 pm
- My Puffers: 2 f8's. Have also kept dp's and gsp's
- Location (country): Usa
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
The penguin filters use a bio wheel on them that stays all the time
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JoseDepacos
- Green Spotted Puffer
- Posts: 395
- Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2010 3:18 pm
- My Puffers: Valentini- Ripley
- Location (country): USA
Re: My Gsp's belly turned black
Regardless how overfiltered this tank is, its still absurdly small for three puffers. Even juveniles and is still too small for two F8's. Some fish dont take well to a new environment and become severely stressed. His turning black was an obvious sign of stress. Throw two F8's in the mix, no test equipment for water parameters and an undersized tank and you've got a recipe for death.