The Puffer Forum

No...the rust colour stuff is diatoms...microscopic things who use up any silicates in your water..they often appear in a cycling or newly-cycled tank. Scrape em off if they bug you, they'll die-off eventually.
You can't see the good bugs...they're too small and most of them will be in your filter.
Pami.

Pamela wrote:No...the rust colour stuff is diatoms...microscopic things who use up any silicates in your water..they often appear in a cycling or newly-cycled tank. Scrape em off if they bug you, they'll die-off eventually.
You can't see the good bugs...they're too small and most of them will be in your filter.
Pami.

Hi Pami,

Are these diatoms a good thing or a bad thing? Should it be scraped off? Or does it not matter?

On a side note, the tank's cycling great. My ammonia's back to zero and have yet to check the rest of the parameters.

Yup, B-S really does work!

I'd let them bloom and then die off...if you keep scraping them off, they'll always re-establish themselves, but if you let them flourish, they'll get too populous and die off. They're horrid-looking, and feel yuk, but just turn a blind eye. It can be a sign, though, that there's a lot of organic compounds in your tank, but as you're still cycling and getting the tank to settle, that may change.
Pami.

Well, Frankie finally died last night I think he had a worm eating away at him from the inside out. I never could tell until his last hours when he looked really emaciated. I was trying soo hard to keep him alive too.

I should have known better though, because he looked like that the day I got him. I'm sure he had it all along. I learned my lesson, no more buying fish on-line.

Sorry to hear that. It's very stressful for them, all that shipping and storage, new tank, antibiotics...I guess poor Frankie just wasn't strong enough to take it.
Ah well...lesson learned - we've all been there, but it does suck.
Pami.

Lagger wrote:I learned my lesson, no more buying fish on-line.

What online source did you buy him from?

Thanks Pami. Your help has been appreciated

I bought him at Aquariumfish.net The site is helpful, however, in my mind their fish supplier isn't the best. All my fish came in pretty ruff shape. I've found a local shop since that seems to be great. Thats where I'm getting my next puffer. His gsp's look great as do his porcupine's and dog faces.

I bought him at Aquariumfish.net

That is a shame. Their livestock used to be of very good quality. Did you talk to anyone at the company about the Puffs being in poor condition when you received them?