New SAPs to replace my little ones who died from Ich
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.
- borgey
- Figure 8 Puffer
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Re: New SAPs to replace my little ones who died from Ich
Alright I think I am going to give it one more shot. This time I will use marine salt and bring the SG to 1.005. I will just acclimate them over a good hour or so. Pufferpunk I want to thank you for bringing in all the mentors to help on this situation. I also want to thank all the Mentors for taking time out of their day to help me out. I am going to wait a little bit and disinfect the QT then try again with marine salt.
-
nmonks
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Re: New SAPs to replace my little ones who died from Ich
Do note that marine salt mix will raise the general and carbonate hardness as well as the pH. For therapy, you want to use plain sodium chloride if your puffers are being maintained in soft water conditions.
Cheers, Neale
Cheers, Neale
- borgey
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Re: New SAPs to replace my little ones who died from Ich
I have one more question. You told me the "spoon per gallon" measurements are basically useless. I totally agree but how else could I have measured the salt (I was not using marine salt). I just have never heard of someone using a hydrometer ect. ect. for salts other then Marine Salt. If I could use one that would be great to know.nmonks wrote:SAPs are very hardy. In fact I think they're the hardiest of all the freshwater puffers. They are prone to whitespot though. Velvet is easily confused with whitespot, but the golden sheen and the smaller size of the speckles should help you tell them apart. Slime disease is common among newly imported puffers. It's not easy to diagnose if you've never seen it before, but the patches of slime on the body, together with overall unhappiness in the fish, are quite indicative. It's tricky to treat, but there are some medications that do the trick, together with saltwater dips.
Don't rely on the "spoon per gallon" measurements. That's hopeless! For SAPs, up to around SG 1.005 at 25 C, or about nine grammes of salt per litre, will produce 25% seawater concentration, more than enough to kill both whitespot and velvet. Your SAPs might be a little annoyed for a while, but such a salinity won't harm them. Because they're so very tolerant of salt, using salt to medicate SAPs is a lifesaver.
Cheers, Neale
- Pufferpunk
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Re: New SAPs to replace my little ones who died from Ich
Hydrometers are not specifically for marine salt. They measure salinity, period.
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...
"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
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Re: New SAPs to replace my little ones who died from Ich
Pufferpunk wrote:Hydrometers are not specifically for marine salt. They measure salinity, period.
Is that good or bad? Are they useful in a situation like this?