The Puffer Forum

Many animals when they get to starvation mode, may have to be force fed.

I added safestart to the filters and now I guess I should see some improvements in a few days time? Does anyone know if it actually works well? Sure hope so. I would be gutted if he dies....

SafeStart works. It doesn't always completely cycle a tank, but since your tank was partly cycled already, you should be fine.

I did a measurement an hour ago which told me there's no longer any ammonia there, at least nothing that's measureable! Not eating yet though....

No ammonia is definitely progress! What about nitrites?

Don't forget, it could be the nitrates/ites that could be doing the job.

Not that I'm thinking about doing anything crazy but, I'd like to know pufferpunk, what you exactly mean by "force feeding"?

It's the actual process of pureeing healthy, vitamin-packed foods in a blender & using a syringe to push food into a tube down it's throat to feed the fish.

I think you may be ok now. Try live earthworms, to entice the puffer to eat.

Did you do a large WC before adding the product?

Ok, after a few days now, I have done an other ammonia-test and the problem is back, with an extra punch.... So have the bacteria died off? That would be quite strange no? I guess I have to do another big waterchange than, but this crappy safe start costs me about 20dollars a' bottle! I also took the filter that was cleaned least recent, and cleaned it out and used filter material from my other freshwater tank that has a well established bacteriaculture... All to no avail!

The puffer hasn't eaten yet and I tried another earth worm, dropped it right in front of him. He hardly looked at it, and when it touched him, he ran of and burried himself in the sand.Offcourse I also offered him clams, frozen feeder fish(which he doesn't like), and there are live shrimp in the tank.

What I do realise now is that before he stopped eating, I had recently added some riversand to the aquarium. But I didn't rinse it, and I guess it was a week after that he quit eating.

What are your actual readings for ammonia and nitrate/ites? I don't really understand how your ammonia is spiking so high, usually the safestart takes care of it. Could you have missed something in the tank maybe one of those shrimp have died and are decomposing? I don't know if there are places in your tank for stuff to hide but something could have crawled up somewhere and died. I don't know just a thought. I hope he starts eating soon.

Yeah I hope so too, but I'm guessing my little guy won't hold out much longer... There is a little cave in there but could one shrimp give of enough ammonia in a 25g to create high readings?

My ammonia was at around 1.5mg/l, nitrates were around 20, nitrite 0...
Food doesn't seem to even ring a bell anymore.... I wave some food in front of him, pushing it against his mouth, but all he does is make clear that he would prefer me leaving him alone.

But how is it possible to have 0ammonia one day, and then the next day, it comes back??
There are two filters in there, I tried the safe start, I clean up leftovers of food, I stir the sand once in a while... I do what I can to make my fish's lives enjoyable but Pufferpunk's force feeding is just not my ticket. I find it hard just cutting the teeth for my f8's so doing something that elaborate seems over the top, even when I see my congo suffer. It might be selfish, but that's not how I intend to come across......

I think I may be losing my mind, but the ammonia test I just did, came out negative.... So no ammonia today?!

He is still not accepting any food, I keep pushing a mussle against his face but he gets annoyed every time... THis guy is gonna die if he keeps starving himself. It must be pretty much a month ago this guy ate something, looking skinny and all....

I think it's time to start force-feeding.

I understand if you don't want to force-feed. I actually have never done this myself. How long have you had him? Is he an adult? I had a suvattii who was doing great when I got him & within 6 weeks, he started refusing food & then died. I opened him up & found his liver to be rock hard & yellow--liver disease, probably due to being fed feeders at the shop he was being kept at.

He is not an adult, well not a full grown one anyway, about 2,5-3 inches in size. I've had him for about 3 or 4 months, and he was always a good eater! His staple diet was always frozen mussles, because he didn't like much else. On 3 occasions(well spread) I gave him live fish, that were always from my own tanks.... They never had a chance! What more can I do?

Anyone have an idea about the ammonia levels swinging?