New to form, puffer changing colors

[cheri]

Hello, I've had my dogface pufferfish for three years, he's in a 135g fowler tank. My husband and I recently rescued a baby dogface from a pet store and put him in the show tank with our three year old puffer. Our puffer hasn't made any aggressive moves or anything toward the baby, but everytime he swims by him he changes colors, I've never seen him do this before. Has anyone ever experenced this. Besides the color changes he's acting normal. When I say changing colors, I dont mean dark like when he's sleeping, he changes all sorts of colors, purples, blues, greens ect. And when he swims away hes back to his normal color.

[Pufferpunk]

Could be threatening. We generally don't suggest combining puffers. How heavily-decorated is the tank? Can you post a FTS? I'd keep a close eye on those 2. Unfortunately, most of the damage is done at night...

[cheri]

We dont have any decorations in the tank. We have live rock. Well as live as it can be with a puffer. I keep fresh rocks from the reef tank to put in so he has something to chew on. We are planning on going up to a 250 gallon, we werent planning on getting another pufferfish. I dont now if were going to keep him yet, just needed to get him out of the store before he died. Last night went fine. Woke up to two happy pufferfish. Mine was waiting for me at the top and the little one is still weak and has a hard time swimming. We have a Naso, Blue tang, coral beauty, and a butterfly. The water levels are fine. I keep the sality around .25 kh at 9 ph 8.3. / I was just wondering if anyone had seen this before, hes not being aggressive to him he does his normal thing. I though he might be giving a warning to the little one hes getting to close and he doesnt like it. My puffer is so gental I dont think he would do anything. I can pet him, and feed him by hand. We also have a giant hermit crab in the tank he never messes with and little clean up crabs.

[Pufferpunk]

LOL, LR is decor to a fish!

I am very surprised you put s sickly, dying puffer in with your healthy fish, risking the lives of all. It belongs in QT, for quite some time, before he can be introduced to healthy fish.

[cheri]

lol, it did sound like I came home and put him in right away, he was in a hospital tank. I did a fresh water dip with methalin blue to boost his ammune system. He's doing fine. We think he might have a bladder problem, hes eating great, looks great, and gets excited to see me, but he is still having problems staying afloat. For our other puffer he is staring to get use to him. He's not turning into a rainbow everytime he swims by.