Takifugu Ocellatus

[sevenyearnight]

I <3 Mushroom !

[Reaperpilot2014]

Congrats on getting him feel good

Lol Engrish fail

It's okay, we're all lysdexic at one time or another.

[sevenyearnight]

It sounds like a Japanese to English bad translation. Lol

[Reaperpilot2014]

Lol, I speak Japanese, and still have fun speaking "Ja-pa-ni-zu In-gu-ri-shu" lol.

[Christie_ZXR]

Thank you so much for all your compliments everyone! Very proud puffer owner here! lol

Does look like bad news today though He's taken a turn for the worse, so I'm guessing maybe week 2 is going to be the hardest week!! Mushroom has refused food, and his colourings gone all funny, not as bright as it should be, which I'm guessing means I've got an unhappy puffer. He's also taken to hanging around right next to the skimmer, and lying on his back. Scared the life out of me, but when I went to fish out the "dead puffer" he spat water at me and scarpered to the other side of the tank! But he did return and sort of float near the surface, and he doesn't look so happy at all

I think I know the problem, the tanks got very high nitrates. Which is my own stupid fault. Since he was going to get moved to saltwater eventually, I started him off just in tapwater, to save hassle, and because my tapwater's very hard. It's also got stupidly high nitrate to start with (over 50ppm) which I just didn't think of. I use remineralised RO in all my other tanks because of this. What do you guys reckon? Probably the problem?

I did his water change to start getting salt in the water, and his tank now reads 1.002. Achieved this with lots of guesswork and the o/h doing the proper maths! The new water was 1.010 I think to get this. I'm really not up on marine at all, having never kept anything that needs marine before. So, if I mix up a load of RO to 1.002, and do a 50% water change to get the nitrates down, am I going to be altering the water chemistry too much for him? I don't have a refractometer, just a hydrometer, so I'm dubious about getting the accuracy right.

Um, any suggestions please?

[sevenyearnight]

They are very sensitive to nitrates, get them down to under 20.
If you knew your nitrates in your tap were that high, that should have never been used to fill his tank.

I could be wrong, but I thought internal skimmers being in a sump. It shouldn't be in the tank anyway at that low of salinity, they can be moody and the skimmer might upset him being inside his tank.

Don't even worry about the salinity change at the moment, it shouldn't be changed more than .02 a week anyway, but right now get the RO mineralized into his tank and get the nitrates down ASAP

Always have his nitrates below 20.

[Pufferpunk]

Try my Vitamin C dosing to lower nitrate: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13501

[sevenyearnight]

Will that still work with the low SG level she has?

[Pufferpunk]

I don't see why it wouldn't work even in FW.

[sevenyearnight]

I hope it does. I've only used it in SW before.

[Christie_ZXR]

sevenyearnight, you're totally right, I don't know why I didn't think of it. I feel like a total tit
To "help" matters, my poxy API kit was reading 0 Nitrates, but when I double checked that with my other kit, because 0 seemed unlikely, that's when I found over 50 ppm. I'm thinking I might run into one of my lfs today and ask them to triple check it with their fancy test kit too!!

Luckily, little man looks a world better today. I pinched some Nitrate Minus off my dad yesterday, and stuck that in along with the water change and my better test kit read 20. (my api one is going in the bin!!)

My poor RO unit's been overworked!! So he's getting another change today. I really did think he was done for yesterday but seeing him swimming around today, albeit a bit lethargically, is such a relief.

On the bright side, here's hoping I've got quite a strong little fish and once he's in the proper conditions he'll do really well

[bertie 83]

Well done perking him up. However I would not use nitrate minus or any chemical claiming to improve water quality. W/c only

[Christie_ZXR]

It was an emergency situation! Normally I wouldn't. I use remineralised RO, so I don't have to worry about nitrate. My tap water is just horrible. The water board seem to have made some improvement, about this time last year it tested over 100ppm, and now it's only just over 50. Which is a start I guess.
Don't laugh at me, but I know nitrate minus works, because I tested it. It's really silly, but I filled up a little bottle with tap water and put what would probably be like a 50 times dose straight into it, then tested it for nitrate. This was quite some time ago, and I was, um, just playing! But it did bring it down.

I was looking at a little bottle of something or other in an LFS the other day. It claimed to "refresh" the water, and remove nitrate "eliminating the need for water changes" !!
The awful thing is, there's bound to be someone, somewhere, that believes that ridiculous claim. I'm sure things like that really shouldn't be allowed. Maybe under false advertising or something.

[sevenyearnight]

Het, that's good news!
The API nitrate test, the second bottle, you have to shake the bajesus out of it to get an accurate reading, or it will say 0.

[Christie_ZXR]

Ah, thankyou. I probably didn't! I'll try it alongside my other test next time and see if it reads the same

(it hadn't actually made it as far as the bin yet anyway! lol)