F8 behaving out of character

[ash]

Hi,

My F8 that i have now had for about 2 and a half years has started to behave strangly.

The tank is 140litres and he shares it with 5 bumblebee gobies. It is brakish at .004-6. I do a 20% water change every week and the tank is massively over filtered with one large external canister filter and 2 large internal powerhead filters. All in all the water quality is good.

There are plenty of hiding places for the puffer and a good current.

Recently he has been hiding from view alot. Not really as active as he used to be. I thought that it was the lighting being too bright so i took out one of the 2 flourecent tubes. This didnt seem to make much difference. Strangely it is almost as if he is nocturnal. There are no plants in the tank so it doesnt matter if the light is on or off - but i would like to see him occasionaly.

Does anyone have any suggestions. I have added a batch of river shrimp which he chased for a while. but now he just lets them live.

I know that boredom is often a problem but is there any way of dealing with this without re-arranging my whole tank?

Thanks in advance.

[manutius]

This may sound odd but have you changed to furniture in the room, or decorated?

Puffers are funny things, I think someone on here has a puffer that doesn't like people with beards!!!

Also has it got warmer where you are?

[ash]

Nope, Havnt changed anything in the room.

It has got warmer though. Its been very humid recently.

[manutius]

what is the tnak temperature? Is it within the norm?

[ash]

27 degrees Celsius at the moment.

Guess it gets cooler at night.

[manutius]

that should be ok

You could try re-arranging the decor, are there any other signs, poor colour, black tummy etc

[ash]

Nope he looks fine, eats fine. Gold is nice and shiny. Just doesnt move much.

[manutius]

I can't think of anything else othere than maybe a re-shuffle of the tank. I hope this sorts itself out

[ash]

Ill give it a go this weekend and will let you know. - it is just a bit of a pain. We will see what the outcome is.

[manutius]

good luck

[ash]

Hi again.

I did my weekly water change on Sunday. I changed the whole tank around and blocked off the place that the puffer used to hide (there are plently of other caves for him). I changed the flow of the filters to go the other direction and added a bit more air flow into the water.

At first there was no change to the behaviour - still liked to hide alot.

Today i have noticed that he is swimming up and down the glass a bit more and exploring the new decor. He generally looked a lot happier. Hopefully tomorrow or in the next few days he will be back to his old self.

So there you go. He probably was bored!

Thanks for your help

Ash

[manutius]

That is great news

[Hilly]

It can be worthwhile moving stuff round every now and then, even if its only moving the plants to different places can be enough to keep your puffers inquisitive nature up.

[my name is mike]

my adult fig 8 gets really mad at first when i rearrange, but after a day, he is noticably happier, exploring, hunting, etc, so i try to change at least one thing every water change --- i have also noticed a change in behavior since i started feeding snails more frequently -- he seems to cruise the bottom more, scanning the gravel for snails -- its cool to throw the snails in when he is not looking, so he can find them on his own, more rewarding i think

[manutius]

I think that is great, chucking them in after lights out would be good but then I suppose there is the worry they would die off over night under BW conditions