The Puffer Forum

After his water change, the level was dropped to 1 ppm. In half.

Still too much, though. Puffer fish came up to the surface and seemed to be struggling, making quick darts, and its fins were slowing. I have a thick level of aragonite on the bottom of my tank; not sure if dirt/crap was stirred up too much when using the siphoning tube.

Placed him into the 30-gal tank as a desperate measure to save him. He's the only one in it, and one pond snail.

Ammonia is at 0.25 ppm, and there are currently no nitrites or nitrates. Withholding adding shrimps/snails/plecostomus until I have a better grasp of what's going on.

I add the Tetra SafeStart last Thursday/Friday when I started cycling the 30-gal.

Dechlorinated water and added a slime layer to his skin.

Can't do much but monitor him for now. Planning to give him only as much food as needed to keep those toxic levels down.

Please don't assume that the advice received was for nothing.

He seems to be doing a bit better. When I has placed him back in the 10-gal he had shown signs of stress again. That told me that he's not going back into that tank for now.

Continue doing as many WC as needed to keep ammonia/nitrite at 0. ONLY add Prime to the water.

Pufferpunk wrote:Continue doing as many WC as needed to keep ammonia/nitrite at 0. ONLY add Prime to the water.

I don't have Prime.

What I'm worried about is that if I do a water change, how do I replace the starter stuff/dechlorinate the water without adding too much or too little?

At least the salt can be measured with hydrometer.

Forget about the salt for now. Keep doing 80% WC & add Prime as you were told to yesterday. This is the very BEST thing you can do to save this puffer right now.

Prime is added 1 drop/g or 10ml treats 20g.

Do you think Petco or Wal-Mart would have Prime?

I'll need 30 drops for 30 gallons.

Tomorrow I'll call and if they have it for freshwater I'll buy and use it.

For now I just did a 75% WC and will be checking the ammonia yet again. Then repeat tomorrow.

Be sure you use some kind of dechlorinator, until you get the Prime. Yes, those stores should have it. I buy it by the liter, on Amazon.

I do have a Jungle Safe Start bottle, which dechlorinates and conditions the water, as well as adding a slime coat. I also have a sample packet of Tetra SafeStart, which does the same thing, but I'm almost out of.

Did a 75% WC and the ammonia is still at 0.25 ppm. Slightly more yellow, towards '0', which is progress. Will do another WC tomorrow.

Just bought some ramshorn snails online. Not sure how pricing goes, but it was 12 snails for $9.95, with $11.95 shipping.

Ouch.

Petco didn't carry them. Bet I could find a better deal elsewhere. What do you think, PP?

Use the snails for breeding in the 10g for when he's feeling better. I'd stick with foods easier to eat, like worms, F-D plankton, sm pieces of people shrimp. Be sure to soak all his foods in Vita-Chem.

My puffer didn't make it through the night, so I'm feeling depressed.

I don't think I was ready to adopt him, There's so much involved that you have to research first.

I'll start over with saltwater, and before buying any fish make sure the tank's cycled for at least a month.

I'm grateful for everyone's patience during this time I had with Puffy.

Sorry for y9ur loss. Before you start anything, read & do a TON of research! Read all the articles in the Library & stickied posts here.

Sorry for your loss. I'd say you learned a fair bit on GSP keeping now. You are actually well on your way to having a habitat set up. If you keep up with the cycling, you should have a stable environment for a retry. I'd definitely do a fair bit of reading though before jumping back in.

Try fishless cycling with the bacteria you've already started with, so it doesn't die off: library/water-filtration/fishless-cycling/