The Puffer Forum

well here it is 4 days later and my puffers are at it again. just haning out at the bottom of the tank and their colors are pretty faded. i dont understand it. its just my gsp's. the fig 8's (yes i know i shouldnt keep them in the same tank but they are all stilly juvy's) look and act normal. so i'm doing anothe water change. the one thing i did notice is that the ceiling fan pretty much right above the tank is filthy i just shut it off and the blades are pretty much fuzzy. i think this is the first time the fan has been off in 9 months. so needless to say thats gonna get cleaned off. would that have an effect on it i mean if the dust from that was getting in my tank?

you do know they take naps right? (im sure you do.) maybe theyre just going through a phase? if they are eating ok, i wouldnt worry too much

ya i know they take naps and they do seem to be eating ok. they just dont seem to eat as much i've heard from some peopl that they dont eat as much the older they get. maybe they are just growing up

I think you're not supposed to feed them as much as they get older.
Puffers usually will eat until they explode if you let them.

ok this is the 3rd time i've tried to post this but apparently the puffer gods dont want me to be able to. so i've been testing my water the last couple days. my parameters yesterday were

sg 1.013
nitrite 0
nitrate 5
ammonia .50-1.0

so i treated the water with 20 ML of stress coat plus by API and today when i tested all my parameters were the same but my ammonia dropped to .25-.50, so the water is getting better but the water has gotten cloudy wich is something else i've been struggling with since i upgraded to a 55 gal from a 29. i'm going to do my weekly water change tomorrow and get rid of a piece of driftwood that seems to be shedding tiny pieces of wood and scrub my plants. i should clean out the filters too because they are getting kinda scummy on the chute comin back into the tank. i dont want to go overboard on the cleaning all at once though because i did that once in my oscar tank and killed off most of the good bacteria and the water got even cloudier. any suggestions would be appreciated. i'm racking my brain with things i can do but i'm still fairly new to the brackish tanks. i've only had my gsps for about 8 months but i've never had problems like this before.

ok this is the 3rd time i've tried to post this but apparently the puffer gods dont want me to be able to. so i've been testing my water the last couple days. my parameters yesterday were

sg 1.013
nitrite 0
nitrate 5
ammonia .50-1.0

so i treated the water with 20 ML of stress coat plus by API and today when i tested all my parameters were the same but my ammonia dropped to .25-.50, so the water is getting better but the water has gotten cloudy wich is something else i've been struggling with since i upgraded to a 55 gal from a 29. i'm going to do my weekly water change tomorrow and get rid of a piece of driftwood that seems to be shedding tiny pieces of wood and scrub my plants. i should clean out the filters too because they are getting kinda scummy on the chute comin back into the tank. i dont want to go overboard on the cleaning all at once though because i did that once in my oscar tank and killed off most of the good bacteria and the water got even cloudier. any suggestions would be appreciated. i'm racking my brain with things i can do but i'm still fairly new to the brackish tanks. i've only had my gsps for about 8 months but i've never had problems like this before.

Why is your ammonia so high? That should be a big fat ZERO!!!! I would test your tap water and see if it has the ammonia in it. If it doesn't I would do a water change. It looks like your tank is going through a mini cycle. It sounds weird to me that you don't have nitrites present with your ammonia but I might be off the mark on this one.

i tested the tap water and it was about 2.5. so its reduced alot. with the treatment. any suggestions on a better water treatment to bring it down?

2.5 ammonia in your tap water? Thats high and unhealthy even for people; I hope you drink lots of bottled water. I'm not sure what products are out there for brining ammonia down in water since I have never had an issue with it. I know there are some threads that talk specifically about this issue and there are most likely some ideas in there about what to do. I think the only real way to fix it is to have a RO system.

I think he meant .25. My ammonia in my tap is always .5-1.0. I just upgraded my tank from a 29 to a 125 last sunday. My tank is also going through a mini cycle. Just stay on top of your water changes. You may have to do them daily until the mini cycle is over. And yes I was showing 1.0 amm. 0 nitrites and 0 nitrates on the first few days. Now I'm showing .50-.25 amm. .25 nitrites and 5 nitrates. I'm on day 9 of my mini cycle, and I used the same canister filter that was on the old tank with a new canister.

Don't do a through cleaning on your canister yet. Give things time to settle down first.
I'm doing daily 25% water changes and testing my water everyday. I have a fahaka puffer with an unknown amount of guppies in my 125, so far everyone is doing great.

what do you do to keep your ammonia down before you but it in your tank? thats seems unhealthy to me. I imagine if you have a well cycled tank then it just goes through the normal bio process but you would always have high nitrates wouldn't you?

I'm just wondering how that works out.

I use prime to neautralize the ammonia. I never had any problems with a fully cycled tank and an amm. reading from my tap. Not even when I have done a 90% water change. Immediately after the water change if I check the water the amm. shows up. If I wait a few hours then test the water the amm. is 0. I spoke to someone about it before and they said my test shows amm. because of the chloramine in my water. I'm not sure how accurate that is but this guy builds ro/di unit's and has been in the business for over 40 years. When I use my ro/di, the pure water comes out with 0 amm. and the waste water matches the tap (what ever the amm. reading is that day). What's weird is that a friend of mine who lives about 5 miles away has 0 amm. in her tap water. All I can figure is that we are on different water treatment plants. I live in an older neighborhood and she lives in a new neighborhood. After Ike I had to wait almost 2 weeks to do water changes. The amm. reading was a 5, and we had saltwater mixed in our tap water from the storm. I waited until the amm. went down then I was so nervous during that first water change, I waited until I was off and saved some of the old water in spare tanks just in case I had to move fish out.

dang I guess its not so bad living up in the mountains. I don't have to worry about storms and saltwater and ammonia in my tap water.

It gets really really really cold though...its about 9 degrees out right now.

my ammonia levels right from the faucet




my cloudy tank. this pic was taken about 2 hours after a 50% waterchange and still foggy




my not so happy puffers at the moment



i just did a water change again and now my parameters are

nitrate 0.5- 1.0
nitrite 0
amm 1.o
sg 1.013
i cant seem to gain any ground with this tank. how long would a mini cycle take to clear up? i dont want my fish stressed any more than they already are

You have to get the Amm out of the water!!! That has got to be what is bothering them. Try some to find some Ammonia removers to get the levels down. Your tank is probably cylced but when you add water that has ammonia at 2.0 it is processing that and making your fish uncomfortable till it takes care of it...if it can.

Amquel has some ammonia removers that you add to the water I believe. I dont' know maybe one of the MODs might have some better ideas.