Hello,
I stumbled upon this forum while trying to figure out what is with one of my GSPs and how to help it.
I purchased 3 GSPs from a fish store (not Petco or PetSmart) but still kind of a "skeevy" place. They are still very little, maybe an inch at most. The pet store had them in fresh water so they are still in more fresh than brackish but I'm in the process of transitioning them to brackish with Marine salt. The tank is a 35g tall (yes, I know they will need much bigger very soon. I am moving in a few days and didn't want to try and move a 100+ gallon tank). The filter is rated for I believe 50-75gallons though to try and combat the amount of waste these tiny things put out lol. They have a lot of hiding places and I haven't seen any aggression towards one another yet. They eat frozen clams, blood worms, and another frozen cube type food. The temperature sits right around 75-77. I went out today and got the API test kits to see if my water parameters are contributing to the one sick puffer. He came from the pet store in his current condition. The best way I can describe it is like when reptiles lack calcium and don't have proper care they get shrunken and some tims grow deformed. This puffer looks kinda like that. He is curved awkwardly and shrunken in. The other two are perfectly fine. They were all kept together at the store so I'm a little confused how one became like this while the other two are fine. The two bigger ones don't pick on the sick puffer and the sick one seems to eat fine and swim around fine but he looks awful. The PH was a 7.8, chlorine is 0, the water is hard, Nitrates we're at 20, nitrite was 4.0 and I used Prime conditioner to attempt to lower the Nitrites if that doesn't work I was planning on doing a water change. (I've only had these guys for about a week now so I have not done a water change yet. The only other thing is low alkalinity but I unfortunately don't have anything at home to fix it. I plan on getting something tomorrow for that as well. I'm hoping it's not too late for the little one and I can get him healthy but I'm not sure what could be wrong with him as the pet store acted like all 3 we're totally healthy. It almost looks like some one pinched his body and he stayed pinched in
GSP two healthy one sick?
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.
-
Pufferpunk
- Queen Admin
- Posts: 32773
- Joined: Tue May 31, 2005 11:06 am
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: Filbert, the 12" T lineatus
Punkster, the 4" red T miurus
Mongo, the 4" A modestus
2 T biocellatus
C valentini
C coranata
C papuan
Also kept:
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Re: GSP two healthy one sick?
![[welcome]](./images/smilies/welcome.gif "welcome")
Ammonia? Any nitrite is toxic & 4 is deadly. I'm very surprised they are eating in that. How was this tank cycled?
Rule #1: Never buy an unhealthy fish.
Treat them all
library/hospital/internal-parasites-pre ... treatment/
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!"