The Puffer Forum

I would stay away form the Ammo Lock, it could do more harm than good, keep up with massive daily water changes and hopefully he'll pull through.

Honestly I dont know what the white splotches are, perhaps some of the skin has been irritated and this is the result.

Anyone else any ideas?

Ammo-lock will prevent the tank from cycling. Please read my signature. Poor water conditions will stress the fish, causing lowered immune systems & sick fish. I can't remember the last time I saw a sick fish in my tanks. Discus breeders do 100% WC daily. You can never do too many WC or replace too much water (as long as your tanks are used to it), unless your tank is suffering from "old tank syndrome" (where the water hasn't been changed in a long time) & then many smaller WC throught the day will let the fish catch up to the healthier water, as they have adjusted to the old (usually highly acidic) water.

The bacteria isn't in the water column, its on surfaces

The higher bioload you have, the harder it is for there to be sufficient bacteria to handle the conversions. Puffers are poop factories and are messy eaters, so yes, they have a higher bioload than many other fish.

why does have too many puffers in a tank keep it from cycling?

If the tank is so overstocked that there is just not enough surface area to house the proper amounts of bacteria needed to break down the fish's waste. At that point, large daily water changes are necessary to prevent the puffers from killing themselves with their own waste. It's like they're living in a toilet bowl.

The only thing you can do for these fish is large, daily WC, while you get a much larger tank ready for these fish. I'd add Melafix & Pimafix with each WC. I would have suggested returning 2 of them but they are sick now. You can instant cycle the larger tank with Bio-Spira (NOTHING else will work).

But changing water that much is impossible - maybe if it was freshwater, but using up $10 worth of Instant Ocean daily alone makes it an unfeasable solution. Really, my only option is to move the fish from my 29 gallon freshwater tank into my spare 20 long and make the 29 my brackish tank. What advice do you have for this major change?

I don't get how 80% WC on a 15g tank would take $10 of IO. At one time, my 29g BW F8 tank had crashed & I couldn't figure out why. Ammonia & nitrites were thru the roof. I was doing 2x/day 80% WC. I actually had figured out how much salt I needed & just mixed it in a pitcher & poured it onto the filter, mixing it further. I had to do this for 2 weeks, until I found a rotting carcass of a goby inside a decoration. I wound up using close to 1/2 bucket of salt in all. I think I paid $40 for the bucket.

If you make the 29 brackish, do not raise the SG above 1.002, or you will kill all the bacteria in that filter and start cycling from scratch again. You can increase it to 1.004 the next week and 1.006 the week after that, and I'd stop there for F8's.