The Puffer Forum

I see absolutely no reason to medicate him. Just continue offering live foods & garlic-soaked dead foods.

He's been in his home tank without medication for three days. Looks less afraid but still refusing all food. He just lays at the bottom behind some plants. Ammonia is .25ppm everything else is still zero. There are ghost shrimp in the tank he ignores and a declawed fiddler crab he ignored long enough that it climbed into the filter and I had to dig him out. Any other ideas?

Teeth?

He is likely stressed, keep up the water changes and prime dosing as you are still showing ammonia. Can you get any established filter media from anyone?

Have you added safestart / bio-spira to your filter to aid the non cycled tank?

Teeth look fine and he was eating snails among other things just fine about two weeks ago. Could his teeth have overgrown already. My tap water already as ammonia in it. I think my test kit is reading the detoxified ammonia.

A fully cycled tank would remove the ammo added from your source water in a matter of hours. I would really consider adding mature filter media or safestart/ bio-spira ( depending on salinity)

I'll give it a shot. Thank you.

No problem, hope it helps

HE'S EATING!

Yay!

Awesome

Technically, ammonia is not "removed". It is oxidized to nitrite (also toxic), and nitrite in turn is oxidized to nitrate. Nitrate is much less hazardous than ammonia or nitrite. But the nitrogen is still present, just changed in form. Nitrogen can be removed from tank water by plants and/or algae when they absorb nitrogen to incorporate into their own tissue. Nitrogen is also removed in water changes if the replacement water is lower than the tank water..

The above may seem to be nit-picking, but I have only recently realized that many hobbyists do not understand that changes in form are quite distinct from removal or sequestering, and that high nitrate reading are harmful to many or most fish. Nitrate levels ideally should be at or below 15 ppm in most tanks. Many hobbyists have no realistic hope of achieving those levels due the nitrate levels in their tap water. this can affect their choice of fish tpo keep and/or breed.

HTH/FWIW.

Some great reads on understanding this subject:
library/category/water-filtration/

He took a bite of a mussel and then had enough. It's not much but at least it's something.