The Puffer Forum

"Live bacteria cycling booster", is just that--a cycling booster--no live bacteria in there at all. Many products are tricky like that... Please read the article on Emergency Cycling.

Jivenjune wrote:I generally don't like rules of thumb when it comes to fish.

+ 1,000.

The product i bought says it has 300,000 live bacteria per teaspoon to help cycle the tank.

Also just an update my 2 remaining GSP's are doing significantly better the water has been crystal clear since yesterday and i'm just getting ready for my daily water change, they are a little jumpy but have seemed to calm down a bit this afternoon, i'll feed them before the W/C I'm pretty confident they'll eat, thanks a lot everyone for your help i'll definitely be on the forum in the future!

Hey, Ok so you know that nothing you did is the result of your puffers physical stress since when you took out the puffers from their tanks and appear to be breathing and fine. Trust me they are fine. There stress is sdue to external factors in the tank. Try keeping them in fresh water with a little while with a little bit of aquarium salt to prevent loss of electrolytes which is just them sweating from their gills. also I have yet to find a good substrate for my gsps. Dolomite whas no good. I'm assuming it had too much lime. My figure 8 puffers are thriving ing the dolomite though, three months and kicking, i guess they come from a river that has a high(er) lime content than other puffers. So basically try changing the subsrtate and turn leave them in fressh water with a little bit of aquarium salt. Also I only use aquaclear filters with two sponges and and aquaclear insert in my puffer tanks. I have not had a spike in months. Though keep in mind that there will be spikes in you aquarium when you first get the aquaclear filters,until the bacteria grows over a period of 10-11 weeks.WISH YOU LUCK, DON't GIVE UP, DON'T BLAME YOURSELF....

Also, remember that the guy at the petstore can't test for everything in the water, Mineral content etc., ike iodione, calcium and magnesium. You needs special tests for those minerals. He also has no right to say the water is not the problem just for the point that I stated. Plus he should not say that the nitrates are not the problem because because he probably has no understanding of the green spotted puffer's body chemistry and nitrates can be extremely toxic to green spotted puffers.

Sorry but there is no way live bacteria comes in powder form. It may have been live at one time but certainly not now.

The product I bought to cycle my first tank said that it had 10,000 live bacteria per teaspoon. It did not. Three GSPs died as a result.

I've always had a hard time understanding how live bacteria can stay "alive" in a room-temperature solution. We used to have a product over here called 'Bactinettes' and it was refrigerated, and it worked! They stopped making it and now there's another product on the market made by the German company JBL, but I don't think that's refrigerated either. Shame about the Bactinettes, you could literally put them in your tank and then put fish in immediately and all was fine.