The Puffer Forum

Hi,

I've been trying to get some help on another forum but having limited success so am hoping someone here can help.


I bought a 1 1/2 inch figure 8 puffer about 10 days ago.

I was sold him as a frehwater puffer and my prior research suggested that freshwater was fine for them... ( i now know better!)


Ok, so he was in a freshwater tank with tankmates, and he was just going up and down the corner- (not good) and his belly went dark grey.

I did many water changes to bring nitrates down- although they were already low. This did not help.

Then his eye went cloudy!


So, i got him his own 20 Gallon tank, and had 15 Gallons of RO water made up for it. I also put 5 gallons of the mature water and slowly made the tank brackish. 1.005. I also took filter material from the mature tank and put it into his filter to help speed the cycling up.. and am going to do 50% water changes twice weekly until it is cycled properly

He seemed a little better and his belly would go white then back to grey again, especially if i went near the tank or turned the light on,

I decided he was very shy so heavily planted the tank with java fern so he would feel secure and less frightened.


Melafixed for 5 days and his eye cleared up.


But his belly is still dark grey, although it does lighten up, then darken again, and he does go up and down the glass, although it is alot less.

The nitrates are 0 (RO water)
The nitrites are 0
The GH is 21
The KH is 10
The PH is 7

Temperature is 27 degrees.

He does eat, he liked live river shrimp (when he can catch them, has eaten apple snails, and also frozen cockle blocks. But has a concave belly when he's not being fed... (?)


any ideas would be great, i've come this far with him.....





ps.. (he had a miraculous near death experience this morning, as i found he had jumped out of the tank through the feeding hole in the roof and landed on the kitchen floor, puffed up completely and was motionless. I thought he was dead but as i picked him up he flicked, so i put him back in the tank... where after 10 minutes of no movement he de-puffed and carried on swimming round the tank normally!!!!!)

I have since covered the hole!


(surprisingly enough, he was very grey after that, but showed no sign of physical damage or irratic swimming.)


We have a 5 month old kitten who hangs out in the kitchen, so his survival is even more special!


So please help me make him happy.. he deserves to live!



xx

Welcome to the site


Do you know you're ammonia readings as well?
If the media was taken from a freshwater tank to 1.005 its quite possible that a lot of that bacteria may have died off due to the salinity change. So he may be going through a complete cycle whilst in this tank. With him jumping out could possibly point to him not liking something in the water, possible ammonia poisoning but knowing the readings would find that out. If the belly goes concave quite quickly after a feeding it is also possible he has internal parasites as well.

Oh dear...

i thought i was being good by putting the filter material in! I never thought about the bacteria dying because of the salt- how stupid of me!!

i can't test the ammonia as it's not on my dip test, but the water is 100% new RO in the last week so i an't imagine it could be high ammonia?!

have to get ammonia test kit!

How would i treat an internal parasite?

should I replace the filter material for new stuff and water change again? 50% or 100%?


thanks for your help, it's important for me to try and solve this.. i hate losing fish and won't give up without a fight!


xx

RO water is not good for freshwater fish as it doesn't have the trace minerals and whatnot they need. Regular tapwater that's declorinated with Prime or something similar is best.

The media is in now I would leave it there. The fish will be producing ammonia as waste and if bacteria has died off then it will not be being converted so it could be affecting him.

Dip tests have been known to be notoriously unreliable, if you can get hold of some liquid test kits do so and get a comparison.

In the mean time if you go on the assumption that the tank isnt cycled daily big water changes are going to be the way to go, if you can get an ammonia reading that may help you solve the mystery. Don't bother with RO normal treated tapwater will do just fine.

There is an article in the library on IP's. There have been a few posts recently on jungle parasite clear or whatever its name is used as treatment for iternal parasties.

but i thought that by mixing the salt back in that gave them all the trace minerals they needed.

oh, this is so difficult for me.

so many different people saying so many things!

our water is really hard, so the idea of RO was to soften it down, as it was top end of hardness for puffer range.


so, you think i should do 50% water change with conditioned tap water, made up to 1.005 salt...

and replace filter material with new...

then keep up water changes and hope that i can cycle it without losing him to nitrate spikes?

That's a good point with marine salt is does add trace elements back in for saltwater, I wouldnt worry about you're water being hard though, mine is and it didnt seem to do any harm to brackish puffers in this area of salinity. I myself have never used RO always stuck with fresh and just added the marine salt to the desired level.

But yes for ease of purposes conditioned tap water pre-mixed with salt, you can replace the filter material if you want but it may add a few more days if it is re-cycling as some bacteria may have made it through the salinity change. Big daily water changes will minimize the risk of ammonia and nitrite spikes doing him harm.

ok!

I shall go home and do a 50% water change with pre-mixed salt and see if we can get him through today..

then the same tomorrow and the day after...




'sigh' I may develop scales with all these water changes!!!

(and this is the baby tank, the oscar tank is something else all together!)


thankyou for your help, i shall give updates as i'm sure i'll need more help with him.

xx

If you see him perk up after a water change you can put money on something in the water is distressing him.
Let us know how you get on.

I wish he would tell me exactly what it is though!

Definitely try and get a hold of an ammonia test kit; it's a crucial tool for good fishkeeping.

I would also recommend treating for parasites as it's very common in puffers since they're wild caught..
Soaking their food in Gel-Tek Ultra Cure PX and Garlic Guard worked great with my F8's.

can't seem to get that in the UK.

Anyone know a UK equivilent?

RO water is great, and the salt will make it safe for the puffer. If you are worried, you can also add "RO Right" a product that will add back what it needs. I use RO water in all my puffer tanks, because they are so sensitive to bad conditions, just have to add salt or the RO Right if its going into a freshwater tank. I've seen a huge improvement in my freshwater puffer when I switched from my nasty tap water to the RO filtered, he was fine before I moved, but he doesn't seem to like the city water so much.

Most likely you have a bit of a cycle going on due to raising the salinity, but just keep doing water changes every few days and it will be over soon enough. The puffer is pretty small and the tank is a decent size, so you should be able to keep up with it. But definately get an ammonia test, as that's the only way to know for sure.

Oh, your other option is to lower the salinity back down to say 1.001 or 1.002 (do a 75% watch change with straight freshwater) and then steal more plants, gravel, etc from your other tank to bring in bacteria. Then once its stable, raise it back up to 1.005, but don't raise it more than .002 each week. Which ever option you'd feel more comfortable with.

sorry to hear of your problems, here's the test kit you need http://www.aquaessentials.co.uk/index.p ... cts_id=219

though a master test kit will have everything that you will need

You should find the Hagen stuff in most LFS. mini master test kit does Ammonia, Ph, Nitrite and Nitrate, iwll set you back about £20 for that test, but well worth it.