The Puffer Forum

Hi, Pufferpunk, thank you for talking with my husband last night about our GSP. Here's the basic infomation:

Parameters: (these were measured using Mardel 5 in 1 test strips)
Nitrite - 0 ppm
NitrAte - 20 - 30 ppm (it falls between 2 shades on the test strip)
Hardness - 205 ppm / very hard
Alkalinity / buffering - 150 ppm / ideal range
pH - 7.6 - 7.6 (again, the shade on the strip falls between 2 shades on the master key.)

SG - 1.001 - I'm transitioning him to brackish. (Like many people who see a GSP in the fish store and go "oh cute!" I was under the mistaken impression at first that this fish was fresh water)

Tank - 25 tall, so 30 gallons I'm guessing. We adopted some fish from a friend who moved and this tank came with so I put the inhabitants in my 30 gal. and set up this one for the puff.

Inhabitants - 1 GSP, 5 molly fry.

Feeding - live foods once per day - bloodworms, brine shrimp, shell-on raw frozen shrimp (defrosted of course), there is a population of snails in the tank and my other 2 tanks, ramshorn & pond snails, other seafood such as squid as available.

Water changes - When puff was in the 30 gal. I probably did them way too infrequently given the # of inhabitants in there, probably every 2 months. He's only been in the new tank a couple of days and I'm not sure what my water change schedule should be there.

Products added to the tank:
New tank - melafix, Amquel Plus, Seachem Stability, Sea Salt.
Old Tank - melafix, Nitraban, Maracyn-2, sea salt to get the old & new tanks equal in terms of SG before transferring the puff.

Aquarium Set-Up:
New Aquarium - I received this from a friend so the gravel, filter bio-sponge & bio grid, rocks with green algae, and about 1" of cycled water was already in there. I filled it up and added the amquel, seachem stability, and melafix, and the 5 molly fry, and 4 of the adopted fish which are unknown species, perhaps rosy minnows, perhaps originally pond fish as my friend got them from hs dad who had a pond as well as the tank. I let the tank run for about 2 weeks before adding the sea salt and then about 1 more week before adding the puff. In the last few days I added 2 decorations and some plastic plants before adding Mr. Puff.
The old aquarium had been set up for almost a year and had 200 ppm nitrates (so I was anxious to move mr. puff to his new home) and less than 0.5 ppm nitrites, 250 ppm hardness, 80 ppm alkalinity / buffering and pH of 6.8 -7.0, so I added some Kent Marine superbuffer.

I know I've done a lot of "tinkering" in a short amount of time and it's best not to use medicines, but I didn't want our pufferfish to suffer or die!

So now that the stats are out of the way, here is what happened:
I came home one day to find one dead molly in the 30 gal and the puffer swimming listlessly and bumping into things, he also had no appetite. His stress line was very thick and dark (what my husband referred to as "bruising"). So between the advice on puffernet.tripod.com puffer pathology & diagnostic flowchart, and the advice of the most knowledgeable LFS person I've ever met so far, I treated him with Maracyn-2 for 1 week, after which his color improved dramatically and he started eating again and stopped bumping into things. However, after a few days of improvement, I noticed that he would involuntarily shake from time to time, like a person does when they try to stifle a really big sneeze or in the "someone walked over my grave" manner. He would be trying to go somewhere and then have his movement interrupted by the shaking, not as if he was doing it on purpose. His appetite seemed to fall off again as well. So meanwhile I'm trying to get the 25 tall set up for him as quickly as possible. I had also done a 10% and then a 30% water change on the 30 gal which didn't make the nitrates go down, nor did the Nitraban. 2 days ago I transferred him to the 25 tall, and yesterday he would still shake from time to time, haven't seen him do it today, and today he ate some bloodworms. He's currently puttering about looking for edibles on the substrate.

Any insight you can give would be most helpful - I'm trying to be a better fish-ma. thanks!!

Is the new 25 tall you refer to cycled?

Don't know what the shaking is, is it definitely shaking, not flicking... like flicking against rocks or anything like that?

Know that pufs are very sensitive to meds, so you need to be really careful about all these things you're adding to the water...

just keep the parameters really good by water changing alone, add melafix/primafix if you want to help him.. and watch how he goes...

Maybe PP has come across the shaking thing before.....?


ps.. i hope you've got those 200 nitrates down on that other tank... those fishies are not going to be liking that at all!

Sorry to hear you are having some problems with your GSP. I have no idea what could be going on. I can tell you my puffers once in a while when they swim fast I can see a little shake of their body at times but it does not stop the fish from swimming. I have not thought that anything was wrong and have not seen any signs of other problems. I thought it was normal.

You are correct about needing to do more water changes. Most of us here do 50% water changes weekly. In doing 50% WC hopefully that will get the nitrates down to 10 or below. Have you tested for ammonia?

Hopefully someone else here can give you more insight.

I have heard of the shakes before but I don't rememeber what the problem was. I'd get out those other inhabitants, the puffer will eat them. A 25 tall probably holds about 20g of water. Stop using the Amquel & Stability. both are preventing your tank from fully cycling. Get the liquid test kits I recommended to your husband. And last, follow my sig!

I will certainly do that. He seems to be doing much better right now, has been exploring his tank and rooting around for food.

Like every said, test kits and water changes are key. If you're worried about some of the toxicity in the tank (especially if it's not fully cycled), pick up some Prime. It's primarily a dechlorinator, but also detoxifies the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in the tank during the cycling process to ease the stress on the fishez. After I picked some up, used it, and noticed how incredibly useful it is, I've been recommending it to everyone who isn't really able to get cycled equipment (ie. filters, decorations, or gravel) and needs help controlling the toxins until the tank stabilizes.

Ideally, you shouldn't have to use any chemicals other than dechlorinator, marine salt, and plant-related chemicals in a healthy and stable aquarium. If you find your pH is starting to get low, head to the fish store and pick up either some crushed Aragonite substrate, crushed coral substrate, or chunks of white coral rocks. For the two substrate options, you can either put this stuff as your substrate (if you like the colour and such), or you can pick up a filter bag thing (a little cotton/nylon/whatever bag from the fish store), put a handful of the crushed coral in there, and put that inside your filter. Crushed coral is basic and will naturally buffer your pH to around 7.8 - 8.2, which is how the GSPs like it. I use chunks of white coral in my Ceylon tanks, and combined with the marine salt, my pH is a solid 8.0.

I'm not sure what the shaking business was. Maybe it had something to do with the Marine superbuffer that was added? Since it's only a brackish tank, none of the saltwater additives/chemicals really help until the salinity reaches about 1.016 (or something like that), as far as I understand it, at least.

Hope that helps!