NEED SERIOUS HELP WITH MY GREEN SPOTTED PUFFER....PLEASE!!!

[volcomkrew4life]

okay i know i'm about to go off on a rant but i REALLY need help and noone seems to have the answers i need=/ i got my green spotted puffer about 2 months ago. i got a 20 gallon tank from petco and all the necessities required (filter, heater, marine salt, ect...) i researched A LOT about green spotted puffers and how to properly care for them but failed to research about tank care and the process of properly cycling a new tank. i let the tank run for about a week at a temperature of around 78-80 degrees. i mixed some marine salt in to make a brackish environment and got the S.G. to around 1.015. after testing the water and showing no signs of ammonia (i have a seachem alert series ammonia detector that constantly monitors the ammonia levels in the water) nitrates, nitrites, or chlorine, and having perfect levels of hardness and a nice pH around 8.0, i went out and got the little guy. he was about an inch and a half when i got him, if that. he was very healthy with a nice white puffy belly and was very active in the tank i took him from. for about a month and a half everything was good. i tested the water about 2 times a week and everything stayed perfect. i started out by doing 25% water changes once every 2 weeks but bumped them up to once a week just because i read it's better for the puffer if you do one once a week. everytime i changed the water i would purify it with Aqueon water conditioner and even let it sit out overnight just in case. i would add the marine salt to get the S.G. back up to 1.015 (sometimes a bit lower and sometimes a bit higher) and would do the water change (i tested the water that i was doing the change with, from my tap, a few times on seperate occasions and found no traces of ammonia, nitrates, or nitrites whatsoever so that's not my problem). he has 2 cave type decorations, a pirate skull head, and a large fake plant in the tank which all keep him very happy and unbored. i would move stuff around when doing water changes so he wouldn't get bored and i always find him exploring. he has sand as a substrate (i don't remember the exact brand but i know it was for both freshwater and saltwater so it couldn't be live sand so i figured it would be great for the brackish conditions. well, about a week and a half before my problems started occuring i added a long bubbler to the tank. it ran 24/7 and he seemed to like it A LOT (would constantly swim back and forth through the bubbles). so one day i decided to test the water because i hadn't tested it for about a week and suddenly the nitrate and nitrite levels are THROUGH THE ROOF. they were off the charts on the little pamphlet that you compare the strips through. i was shocked and thought maybe the strip was bad? so i tested again and the same thing happened. so being a bit afraid i did an immediate 25% water change. in the morning the levels were still exactly the same. i started doing about 20% water changed every day and even right after i did the change the levels would be just as high. the ammonia never was (and still isn't) high at all. maybe a LITTLE green on the detector (yellow being "safe" and green being "alert") but nothing crazy like blue which is "alarm" and purple which is "toxic". so i decided to call up the guy at the local fish store that i bought the fish from. he told me not to worry and as long as i keep doing water changes i'd be fine and that if he looked okay then there was nothing to worry about. he also told me he had something i could come in and get that would help me bring down the levels. i asked him if this was the tank cycling itself and he said that it could be but with one fish the cycle should have been long done after 2 months. plus, there was never an ammonia spike so i don't think it's the tank cycling itself either. i'm pretty sure that's already done but please don't hesitate to correct me if i'm wrong. so i went into the lfs and got Nutrafin "cycle" which is a biological aquarium suppliment which is supposed to immediately establish a safe biological aquarium environment by removing ammonia and nitrites. it's also supposed to allow the immediate introduction of fish. so i followed the directions carefully and added the stuff. well, after a week and a half, nothing changed other than the nitrate levels which went down A LIITTLE bit (of course, the least harmful of the three...) so basically i've just been researching constantly trying to fix the problem but i can't seem to find ANYTHING. i've changed my carbon filter pad twice thinking maybe i had a bad filter (dont worry, i never changed the biological filter pad or washed it or anything) and have done more water changed than i care to talk about. i've cut his feeding down to every other day instead of everyday like i was doing but i never used to feed him a lot and he always ate mostly all of the food (typically frozen mysis shrimp, raw pieces of clam, and/or small snails for his beak and teeth). i read the other day that you're supposed to stir up the sand every once in a while to release air pockets and whatnot before doing water changes but i never used to do that until i did a water change the other night but still no change. i NEED to get these nitrate and nitrite levels down soon. i'm very afraid i'm gunna wake up to my puffer floating on the surface someday soon=/ he is still very active and always explores. he eats violently when i feed him and i never see him laying around or gasping for air at the top of the tank. the only changes i've seen in him are his colors which have turned a BIT brown (which im scared is from the lack of oxygen caused by the nitrites. i just feel like nothing i do is working and that these levels are never gunna go down! i'm begging you all, PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!!!

[sevenyearnight]

Get some seachem prime immediately to help protect your puffer from the toxins, don't get cycle again, that is imo an unethical product containing dead bacteria that does a whole lot of nothing.
Do 50% water changes everyday, twice if you can.

Hopefully someone can assist on a product you can use at 1.015 sg to help along your cycle.

[Pufferpunk]

Glad you found us but sorry it's because of this reason you needed to post. I won't rehash everything you did wrong with the set up & cycling of the tank but it would be good for you to learn the proper info: library/category/water-filtration/
Read the articles on Fishless Cycling & the 2 on microbes. It's always good to know how the biological part of your tank works.

My next suggestion is to get yourself a good liquid test kit. Those strips are unreliable. API makes a good one.

Cycle is dead bacteria in a bottle, which is like adding more fish waste to your tank. Total waste of $$$.

I had a similar thing happen to my tank once. After doing 80% water changes, 2x/day for 2 weeks (that's a lot of $alt!), I finally took out all my decor & found a rotting fish carcass inside a hollow ornament. Pull out all your decor & do a thorough cleaning under everything, stirring the substrate very well & do an 80% water change. Stick your nose up to all your decor & take a good sniff. Could possibly be some rotting food he didn't eat.

More reading for you: library/puffers-in-focus/an-introductio ... d-puffers/

[volcomkrew4life]

thank you very much for your response. i guess the lfs owner doesn't know his stuff. you think that will help bring down the levels?? oh by the way, i forgot to mention, the water has also become pretty hard and alkaline and the ph has risen to about 8.2. idk if that has anything to do with anything but i've read a lot of places that the hardness isn't a big deal at all and they like it on the higher end.

[Flutter]

Don't worry about the pH and hardness right now, it's ok.

[Pufferpunk]

Most shops, no matter how much they insist, really don't know much about keeping fish long term & even less about keeping puffers. They keep selling Cycle & people keep buying it, so why stop making it?

[volcomkrew4life]

alright, but do you think this could be the tank cycling itself??

[Pufferpunk]

After 2 months is shouldn't be but something is killing off the good bacteria. What about ammonia?

[volcomkrew4life]

like i said in the original post, i have a seachem alert series ammonia detector that constantly monitors the ammonia levels in the water and the ammonia levels have never given me a problem or gotten high

[sevenyearnight]

Is your temperature still the same?

[Pufferpunk]

I don't necessarily trust those things either. Is your LFS still open? Or one of the larger chains? Get some liquid test kits. You really need to monitor this kind of stuff very closely.

[volcomkrew4life]

yeah, it's always stayed between 78 and 80 degrees

[volcomkrew4life]

thank you all very much for your help. tomorrow morning i'm gunna go get some seachem prime and a water test kit and do a 50% water change, clean out all the decorations, and then add the prime. sound good?

[sevenyearnight]

Sounds great, keep us posted!

[volcomkrew4life]

Okay so I stirred up the sand real nicely, cleaned out all the decorations in the tank (there was some rotting food stuck in them, not much though) and took out 50% of the water. I added the Seachem Prime to the remaining 50% and a bit to the new water I was using for the change. I added the new water to the tank, got the temp back up to 79ish and TA DA! FINALLY the levels are down! There are barely any nitrates and the nitrites are WAY down (still in a bit of a stressful area but not nearly as bad as they were). Now should I wait and let the Prime remove more of the nitrites (if it even works like that) or should I do another large water change tomorrow and add more Prime?? I really appreciate the help from all of you.