The Puffer Forum

yes, that's possible...

i've bought live sand before and i know it was live... you could see teeny tiny critters running about...

hope it wasn't live sand either way!

I believe it was the Live Aragonite Sand "crazedpuffer" spoke of which was meant to buffer the ph. Actually, I'm not sure, there was an expiration date on it, so it may have been live, either way those scoundrels at the LFS (diff. one from the first one i mentioned) sold it to me in December with a September expiration. I should've noticed myself in retrospect.

Hey Puffer... Try the fishless cycle, it tooks me ~40 days to cycle my tank. My puffer had the same one cloudy eye, but my water param. was really fine, so I didn't understand what was the matter with him. At the end of the story, I noticed that my puffer was scratching his eye against the glass. So I decided to treat him with Melafix and Epsom Salt (1 TEAspoon/gallon). After a week, his eye was brand new!! I had great success using both stuff... this is my advice in case you need.

so he used live sand... but it had gone past it's expiry date?... so all the live stuff in it would have died and begun rotting whilst still inside the bag... or am i misunderstanding...?

If so, that's why he got such a massive ammonia spike... he put loads of dead rotting bacteria into an uncycled tank...

or it was still live, and it died immediately by being put in a freshwater environmnent....


Either way, that looks like the reason...

Now, cycle tank, wait for ammonia/nitrite/nitrates to reach 0 and try again.... let us know how you go. xx

It could be a combination, either way one of those two had happened. even if the sand was still live it would have died anyways. Hopefully things turn out better next time!