The Puffer Forum

Hi, so I have had my new puffers for a little over a month and have never had problems in the past, or with any fish for that matter, except now I think they have Ich? Maybe... I took a picture of Harry (Don't worry I know I used the net but only for a few seconds and I gave him a small treat after for being a good boy), He hides under their bridge and never comes out anymore and he wont eat!

I'm scared haha I know it might sound funny to some but they are my babies!

sorry I don't have numbers of my water parameters, but it has been set up for a few months now and I do water changes every Monday (25%), It's set up brackish, I feed them frozen shrimp brine and recently (3 days ago) switched to live feed. (which I now think was a big mistake). I have two GSP in my tank and they get along great, no algae eaters or anything of that sort.

I have pictures but I guess they are all too big, as soon as I can make them smaller I will upload them, or if you can please email me and I can email you the pictures.

What size tank do you have?
You should really get a water testing kit, get one that uses liquid, not the test strips. Even though you do water changes something could still be wrong. How are you measuring your salt and what sg are you at?

Their diet should become more varied, if you go to the library on here you will find a great article on feeding. I'm not sure what you mean by "live feed" but if you mean live fish that isn't very good for your puffers, there is an article on the cons of using feeder fish too.

There is also an article on ich.

Good luck!!

Also, you can upload pictures to an image hosting site (I use imageshack) and then put them on here

We really need your water parameters, so you should get a test kit ASAP. The most important ones are NO2 (nitrite), NO3 (nitrate) and NH3 (ammonia). As Spock says, get liquid ones. They are more expensive than strips, but strips are not worth the money. They are inaccurate to say it the nice way. We also need to know the SG (the level of salt in the water).

Try to answer the questions in red above - that would help us help you.

As puffers don't have scales, they get ich easily, so you can be right there.

You also should change more water. 50 % a week is the minimum recommandation. Puffers are very sensible to bad water quality, and very messy eaters - not a good combination. They are more sensible to nitrate than many other fishes, and that's why you need to have good water change routines.

Troender wrote:You also should change more water. 50 % a week is the minimum recommandation. Puffers are very sensible to bad water quality, and very messy eaters - not a good combination. They are more sensible to nitrate than many other fishes, and that's why you need to have good water change routines.

Really? That much?

But yes, please answer the questions in red and we will be able to assist you to our greatest ability.