The Puffer Forum

The following is a blow by blow account of the last 2 weeks, so now I am at the pint where the nitrates are at 30ppm and I am treating with salt and high temp

I don't know about you but as a fishkeeper of a number of years I tend only to test my water when a problem arises. About 10 days ago I noticed a huge outbreak of whitespot in my tank with Clooney, the worst affected fish were the Clown Loaches and Clooney due to their lack of scales and therefore less protection against the parasites. So I tested my water:

ammonia 0.0
nitrite 0.0
Nitrate 120 yes bloody 120ppm

I do a weekly 75% water change and this is a reading after the water change

I am clearly overstocked which leads me to a question, what is my best option. I plan to reduce Clooney's feeding to once a week now but I am now faced with these options

Daily 75% water changes
getting rid of Clooney?

or the best solution I think is to get another tank in my hallway for the other fish and leave Clooney on his own and still have the large water changes to deal with. Do you think that this will be adequate though for Clooney in this tank?

Once again I have highlighted why these gorgeous fish should not be available to the general public as very few people can care for them properly. I wrote in my article that it would be down ot my inability to care for him properly that will end his life. I hope that this is not the start of that downhill trend

I have added Nitrate Minus and a nitrate removal sponge to the Jewel filter and once I get the nitrates down to a decent level I will see if they can hold things at bay. Once I acheive the desired level I will see how much feeding time impacts on the Nitrate level. I have tomorrow off and not at work till this afternoon today so I plan another 75% water change as I did yesterday on both days which in theory should be a 225% water change, thus bringing the levels down considerably.

I am gutted, I've had the clowns loaches 6 years and the two biggest are no longer with me, my first tropical fish, so its a bit sad, but they had a good life in a nice big tank I suppose.
At the moment the tap water is reading 15-20ppm but that is higher than normal. I'm hoping that I can get it down with large changes and then keeping it down with the nitrate sponge will work and then get anothre tank or rehome the others.

posted this week:

For the record guys I have just received Nitrazorb but with my mammoth water changes I have got the nitrates down to a more acceptable 30ppm. Its not ideal I know but a definate improvement. The whitespot is still pretty bad in Clooney, I just hope the salt and high temp will do the trick. Will keep you posted guys

Hoorah I received my package from Aquatics Direct only to discover they sent me phospho-zorb and not the nitrazorb I ordered. I need to get a return code before I can send it back but SKY have "updated" my email account which at present has gone so well that I do not appear to be registered with them anymore. Its a good job I don't have that Incredible Hulk disease I can tell you.

I also got a bottle of melafix which I shall add once I have taken the carbon out, which at the moment is getting rid of the meds I used. I have now gone with salt and higher temp and here's where I have another gripe. Throughout our so called summer I sometimes had to reduce the temp in the tank from 30°C as it was overheating, now I want to raise the temp it seems my heater is not any good. Its the standard Juwel heater and is less than one year old, but it has no dial or temp scale so you never really know what temp its set at The manual has a rather ambiguous "the middle setting is about 25°C" but there are no discernable clicks to tell you how much you are turning it up by so you have to do a little bit at a time and check the temp, I have been doing this for the pat 3 days and at 29.4°C it seems about right.

So throughout all this grief Clooney is still hanging in there, I think he has eaten one mussel in about 14 days and is looking quite skinny and the whitespot still seems very prevalent on him and my Black Ghost Knife fish, these poor scaleless fish really don't do well with this disease. I understand that while the systs are on the fish I cannot treat the disease but there does seems to be more appearing. Hopefull now the salt will do its job and kill the free swimming phase

Just to make sure I am getting it right I have used aquarium salt at a dose of about one tablespoon per 20 Litres or 5 gallons, I built this up over a few days as not too shock the fish or in case it affected the filter bacteria. Does that sound correct? I am following the info on the puffer website

Your input would be appreciated.

Alternatively I could build one of these http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2007/01/a ... rical.html

I would put the other fish in a seperate tank. That will help for a while but it sounds like a bigger tank is needed. I hope Clooney pulls out ok.

Ouch! My favorite puffer! Hang on in there!

But I agree with Flamesofifreet: a larger tank for Clooney is needed. So if you are going to take the other fishes out of the tank, I would rather consider buying a larger tank, and move Clooney instead.

Sorry to hear the bad news.
Have you considered a heavily planted tank in the place of a sump? I think RTR did this in the stickied MBU post. The big question is knowing how much you would need to really help out with that large of a nitrate problem.

I would definately think about adding on a fuge, more plants that will use up nitrates fast, getting the other fish out of there.

Consider getting a RO unit, so you are using nitrate free water to do water changes. An added expense yes, but it will be a huge improvement. Or at the very least, a "tap water filter".

Sorry to hear about Clooney buddy. He is definitely one of my favs too.

I think the idea of adding plants,the water changes are good. Removing those other big fish would certainly help but I think long term Clooney will need a bigger tank.

Is a new tank a possibility? If not, is space the limiting factor? Floor strength? Cost?

Do you think a LFS has a big enough tank and could him for a while until you can get a big tank?

I' not sure adding the salt gradually was a good idea... no reason freesswimming parasites could not acclimate if it's added slowly... I had thought the idea was to add it all at once to eradicate the ones in the water, and the unacclimated ones in the imperimable cysts as soon as they popped out. The additional spots appearing may be because adding your salt gradually allowed the freeswimming form to acclimate and recontaminate. Good luck, sending good thoughts to you and Clooney.

So sorry about Cloony! Keep up with the large water changes & be sure to clean the substrate well during the WC.

Ok guys a quick update for you, the cyst seem to be disapearing now with no new ones arriving. Also for the first time in nearly 2 wekkes Clooney is swimming about and the cloudiness to his eyes is going. He seemed to be a lot more "interested" i what is going on aroung him and so I decided to try and feed him. He took two small prawns with without me forcing him, he actually came to me, this is a great sign The only problem is due to the high temp he is breathing hard but with the added aeration from 2 venturi pumps and the fitler outlet pointing at the surface he does not need to gasp at the surface.

Thank you all for your sentiments it means a lot to me and to those who have offered suggestion and advice thank you for taking the time,

In answer to the Q's raised and posed:

A sump is not pssible as the tank does not have a cabinet but is on the floor and there is no floor space underneath, though I agree this would be the ideal situation. Space does not allow me to get a bigger tank for Clooney so the real option is second tank for the other fish, though this will not happen straight away due to a lack of funds.

as for planting this is good but has its limitation due to the swimming space needed for Clooney, I have added some floatong riccia and plan to get some fast growers like cabomba to see if that helps though. I think I will be trimming it back daily though

Nick your piont about adding the salt is good but I added it all over 2 days as I thought that the shock would cause more problems to weakened fish but maybe I am wrong. It doesn't say in the article about addinng the dose at once, maybe it should? I added 10 teaspoon of aquarium salt on day one, 5 first thing next day and 5 at lunch time, this is more than enough for the probable volume of my tank as I see it.

I will keep up with the water changes but I think I have realised why the nitrate went so high in the first place, since replacing my gravel syphon this week I got a lot more decaying matter out the gravel so I guess that my old one wasn't getting all the waste thus adding to the biolad of the tank. Clearly the stocking level is the real problem but all that poo poo wouldn't have helped

Naturally I shall keep you all posted and I shall post the pics soon

I am so glad to hear he is doing better! He is really my favorite puffer

I'm glad the big boy is feeling better! Keep up the good work!

Try some floating duckweed or frogbit (the mini lilypad looking stuff), that stuff sucks up nitrates like there's no tomorrow and it won't interfere with his swimming room. It will block some of the light of course, but it might be worth it.

Is there any room next to the tank to place a sump? It doesn't have to be under the tank, just at a lower level, next to it would be fine? Even just a big rubbermaid tub? Not a good idea if there's any kids around though, and I can't remember if you have any or not.

Troender wrote:I am so glad to hear he is doing better! He is really my favorite puffer

I hope your puffers can't rread


Hey Myaj we do not have kids but it is a plan of ours in the very near future and the tank is in a bay window with very little space either side I have tried frogbit before but it dies in my tank, maybe too much surface movement and it does bet sucked into the filter easily. I will crack this though, thanks for the advice

manutius wrote: I hope your puffers can't rread

They are trapped in their tanks, and can't get to the computer - at least not that I know of. Except maybe little Houdini, who materialized into a new tank 10 meters away from her old one.
But I love them too, of course

Manutius, if you have a small spare tank and some diy skills, you could have a refug on a shelf above clooney's tank. It would be fed via a pump and then it would overflow back down. We have some sort of floating plant in our tank that doesn't seem to mind water flow. They grow like mad too. I'll try to get a picture of it.