The Puffer Forum

Dear Forum,

During the last few days, my SAP has been exhibiting some odd behaviour. On occasion it has been "barrel rolling" and on one occasion tumbled head over tail. It is otherwise seemingly healthy and eagerly feeds on bloodworms as usual.

This symptom seems to be most common when the SAP has not been fed for almost a whole day (I feed it once a day) so I was wondering if it was some kind of nutritional deficit. I supplement the bloodworms with aquarium vitamin drops about twice a week. I also notice that the teeth of the SAP needs trimming (I last trimmed them a couple of months ago but did not trim them as short as I should have). However, the SAP can still feed and has a rounded stomach after feeding.

My aquarium is heavily planted with real plants and has been cycled about a year. I change 50% of the water weekly and the water parameters are 0 ppm nitrite, 0 ppm ammonia and 25 ppm nitrate.

The SAP shares the tank with a bristle nosed catfish and 6 dwarf puffers and they seem to get on fine (tank size 120L).

Has anyone spotted this behaviour before?

Please advise,

Many thanks,

Tony

Well they do need a better diet then just bloodworms, check out the feeding article in the puffer library. He might also have IP which could cause him to act weird when not fed, was he ever treated for IP?

Hi TonyFrend. I'm sorry I have never heard of the symptoms you are describing. I hope someone else here has to help with that.

As for the teeth have you considered feeding live snails or frozen thawed mussel or oysters from the grocery to keep the puffers teeth trimmed?

You mentioned his belly is rounded after feeding. Does it stay slightly rounded until the next day?

SAPs teeth grow so fast, even hard food doesn;t keeo them down, only slows the growth a bit.

I would check on the O2/CO2 levels in your tank and maybe create some more water movement to aerate your water. I've only seen the barrel-rolling behavior in my SAPs during the couple times I had CO2 injection mishaps that caused a spike in the CO2 levels in the water. (My SAPs are in a planted tank with added CO2) The danios and dwarf puffers in the tank were unaffected. I think maybe SAPs are just more sensitive to a lack of oxygenation. Hope this helps.

Dear Forum,

Many thanks for your useful comments. I will respond to the questions from a number of the members in this one response.

Re: rounded belly, the belly does not remain slightly rounded till the next feed; it looks slightly concave before feeding. I treated the tank for IPs using Flubendazole when I first had the SAP (~ 5 months ago) but I will buy some more medication and treat again just in case. I will also try to give the puffers a more varied diet. I will buy some fresh prawns to start with and see if they are acceptable to the puffers.

I will also keep an eye on my CO2 injection, I did renew my fermentation mixture around the time of the symptoms (not sure if it was just before or just after - will check on timing). I have a CO2 indicator system and will renew the indicator solution in case this is not showing an accurate result.

The SAP seems to be back to it’s usual self today, will pluck up the nerve to trim it’s teeth next weekend.

Thanks again,

Tony

Sounds like you are on the right track. I wish your little friends well .