The Puffer Forum

maybe the problem is i the bottled water...

not enough nutrients in it or something...

pH shouldn't be causing that big a deal.. as long as it is stable it should be fine...

You need an ammonia reading.. fine is not good enough, you need to get numbers before you lose both fish.


Any other signs of illness, white spots, slimey skin, anything at all?

This is a weird puffer. I come home from work around 12pm or 1am and he'll be perfectly fine in color and he swims around the tank just cruising. Looks like the most perfectly healthy pufferfish. During the day though he turns gray and hides behind his filter. I dont understand why, he eats everytime I give him blood worms he jumps out of his corner and rushes to the food and munches it all down. I did another water change today and my pH read at about 8.0 later after work im going to pick up a dechlorinator for the tap water, I think I will use that instead of the bottled water this time.....also if you have suggestions as to which brand I should get for that it would be appreciated. So I think my puffer is getting better but I couldnt really tell you with this odd behavior.

Prime is a very good dechlorinator.

Do not adjust the pH. Swings up & down are worse than an abnormal pH. they'll adjust.

okay my pH is at 8.0 im going to start once a week water changes to keep from having these dramatic changes. But, I really think that my pufferfish does not like light. I turned off his light and opened the window and he swam to the shade. When the light is on hes hiding under a plant leaf or up in the corner where the light cannot get him. Should I be worried about this? Should I get him a cave?

Please do.

I'm just going to summarise what other people have said, but in one post so maybe it's easier?

1. Purchase a water test kit (API are good).

2. Test your ammonia, nitrIte, nitrAte and pH levels and post them here. The pet store telling you it's 'fine' isn't good enough. If you've got exact levels for them all then we'll be able to help you a little more b/c we'll have more to go on.

3. Why aren't you using tap water for the water changes? A couple of people have asked.

4. Get some water dechlorinator (Prime, Tetra Aquasafe, whatever there is available) and use that on your tap water to do a water change. Too many water changes of too substantial an amount will be stressing your fish with the swings in water parameters so it's a case of rock and hard place between this and ensuring your water quality is good: I'd go with changing out one-third daily until you can tell us what the precise readings are.

5. Stable pH is better than a fluctuating but occasionally correct pH; i.e. if it's 8.8 then that's high but fine provided it's not swinging from 8.0 to 8.8 every day.

6. You need to be using proper marine salt; you mention electrolysed salt (i.e. aquarium salt) but then later say marine salt. It must be marine salt. You need a refractometer, or at the very least a hydrometer, to measure the salinity level: you say 1.006 at one point, and then 1.007 at another. How are you measuring this? How long have you had the fish, what salinity were they being kept in when you got them, and how fast did you increase the salinity? A rapid increase in S.G. may cause stress: +1.001 - 1.002 a week is usually what you'd be aiming at as a gradual increase.

7. Add increased airflow: when fish hang out in the top of the water column it's usually because there's higher oxygen levels there and so that indicates a problem with oxygen flow. When you have increased levels of nitrIte then that affects a fish's ability to breathe: methemoglobin levels increase, which prevent the blood from absorbing oxygen. So, if your puffer is breathing rapidly, or hanging out at the top of the tank, that's a sign of low oxygen and increased nitrIte levels. Adding an airstone may help ease the struggle, but it won't solve the problem.

Nitrate - 20 ppm
Nitrite - 0
pH - 7.8
salinity - 1.006

- recently purchased prime dechlorinator and I used it today on a tap water, water change.
- instant ocean marine salt is used on the tank, I also have a box of electorlyzed salt, but I was told that this electrolyzed salt should only be used when the fish is sick with ich so I dont add it.
- In response to the airstone idea; would it be fine if I have an undergravel filter with 2 tubes going full? They both make lots of bubbles at the corner of my tank.

aside: My pufferfish shows those gray outlines only during the day but he does not make an effort to hide in his log cave. He will either swim at the top of the tank or curl in a ball and sleep at the bottom somewhere. Its only during the late hours of the night that I see him zooming around the tank. I feed him bloodworms but I bought him some frozen krill that I might try feeding him tomorrow. At my pet store I also get baby snails for free because they dont want them. So every other week or so my puffer has been getting about a dozen tiny snails thrown into his tank.

honestly, my ceylon and gsp both hate light..

thy will swim round all bright and lovely when the tank light is off, but then as soon as the light comes on they will go very black...

i've tried trying to get them used to the light by putting it on for an hour a day, but to be honest it stresses them out so much i've decided its not worth it..

so tank lights stay off in that tank.. i guess its ok for me as I have 5 tanks, so it's not my main display tank.

People have suggested to be looking at a moonlight tube, which looks blue, and see if they mind that.. then you can have a light on in the tank, but it doesn't stress the puffer...

think that's what i'm going to do eventually, but they've just had no lights on for the past year and aare very happy.

I might look into that light suggestion because im pretty sure my fish doesnt like light. I got off work just now and found my puffer at the top of the water floating in the bubbles and he wasn't moving any of his fins like usual he was just floating at the top and it almost looked like the top of his head was out of the water and he was getting pushed by my bubble tubes current, so to say that he looks very weak. I turned the light off for him and I checked the water quality with my test strip.

nitrate 20
nitrite 0
pH 7.8
(I still need to get an ammonia test kit)

But I mean everything is the same as it was yesterday. Im going to do water changes only once a week now since everything is stable. Im assuming he might just be stressed out from the pH adjustment with my water changes, but they have been gradual. This is the first sign that I have seen him actually stick his head out of the water. I turned off the light and put in a small dose of stress coat.

aside:
I tried to feed him frozen krill today....he didnt even move to look at it.

I just got home and its late. I dont think my puffer is going to make it through the night. I noticed him swimming lifelessy at the top and he was covered in tiny bubbles. I though he was dead he was moving so still but he swam a little. Now, hes laying in the leaves of a plant but he looks really bad.

I'm really sorry to hear the news
Sometimes it's possible to lose a puffer for completely unknown reasons, or a contribution of factors some of which you may not even realise are there. I lost my first F8 and I still have no clue about the cause. It's possible, since these are wild caught fish for the most part, that they come in with parasites or illnesses from the wild which don't exhibit physically but cause them to die.

Now you got me thinking about how mysterious my own experience with an ailing puffer was: is there anything you can think of which may have poisoned the water column inadvertently? This was one of the suggestions someone made to me back in 2006 when I experienced a similar thing; it's possible the filter has drawn in a chemical (e.g. deodoriser etc) and circulated it around the tank.

Have you tried adding activated carbon to your filtration to see if that helps? That's another possibility although by now it may be too late Give it a go: it's worth trying most things at this point.

My puffer died im going to let the tank run and put one of my african chiclids in it to help keep the bacteria alive and wait about 2 weeks before introducing another puffer to the tank.

So sad to hear it....you sure did try a lot to do the right thing. Hopefully the next time around will not be this painful.

One question....Do I still need to cycle my tank? I had my 2 puffers live their for about 3 weeks give or take. I still also have about 6 ghost shrimp swimming around and about a dozen mini snails that he never ate. Should I put in a brackish fish or do you think my tank is puffer ready?