Our Newest Family Members

[LizB]

I did it. After my little boy asked me several times yesterday, I went and got him 2 dwarf puffers. Their names are Max and Emmy. Max has color on his tummy and Emmy's is snow white so hopefully they are a boy and girl. I've been reading the DP forum since I got Harry so I'm little schooled on these guys.

For the most part they are sticking close together. We hope the closeness lasts, but of course we're not counting on it. When we were watching them at the LFS 2 of the others were really squabbling over a big shell. Max was the only one that kept coming up to the glass and watching us. Funny little things. Once we got them home it's Emmy that's constantly wanting attention.

Max looks like he might be wormy so they got gel-tek soaked blood worms for breakfast. They came from the same tank anyway. Emmy caught on to the tweezers fast but Max would look and swim away. Of course the first concern was whether he was to the point of not eathing. A few minutes ago I saw him sucking and spitting something out of his mouth so we ran and got the blood worms and hung them on a plant and to our pleasant surprise he ate them! I told my little boy what a good sign that is and that Max might be just fine.

One of the cool things about Harry was that since he started hand feeding from the start I was able to get him to bite on the end of the gel-tek bottle and squirt a little in his mouth. I'm not saying anyone else should do that, I was worried about overdosing him, but it worked like a charm for me. Of course these little guys have mouths so small there's no way.

Have any of you out of curiosity checked the store water when you brought your fish home? I did that to the water that the DP's were in and the nitrates were 40ppm. No wonder so many fish die when they're brought home. Ya know, you float the bag in your tank and then dump them in. What a shock. My nitrates are 10. Of course I did the slow acc. so here's to hoping our newest family members do well. I'm happy they're now in a nice clean home.

Woooo hoooo!

[Nick]

Gel tek is supposed to be doses at several drops of pure medicine per fish, eaten right out of the bottle. It's very dilute, and IMO under-dosing when not enough soaked food is given is a much bigger risk that overdosing, if your fish will swallow right from the bottle, it will be more effective. When I was using it to worm DPs, I would suck a worm and geltek into a dropper, and make them suck the worm out of the end of the dropper so they'd get a high dose.

[LizB]

Nick, I swear you are a genius! What on earth would my puffers do without you?

I will do that for the little ones. That's awesome advice and I'm glad that I did good with Harry. I tried hard to do it like the bottle says, like that will work with a puffer. So like I said, I let him bite the end and I squirted it in his mouth.

BTW, I saw a big GSP today! I was so excited! The store owner put his hand in the tank and cuped it gently around the GSP and the fish didn't care! The owner said that's the sweetest GSP he's ever had. Someone has already bought the GSP and I sure hope they love him. He was so awesome, all big and healthy looking.

BTW, the second my little boy sees your posts he says "it's Shakespeare and he farts sand!" I thought you'd get a kick out of that. I do.

Hugs...

Gel tek is supposed to be doses at several drops of pure medicine per fish, eaten right out of the bottle. It's very dilute, and IMO under-dosing when not enough soaked food is given is a much bigger risk that overdosing, if your fish will swallow right from the bottle, it will be more effective. When I was using it to worm DPs, I would suck a worm and geltek into a dropper, and make them suck the worm out of the end of the dropper so they'd get a high dose.

[Happy_Puffer]

Aww yay on your new family members!!

[Nick]

LOL, glad to help, and that the little one likes Shakespeare I can't wait until Shakespeare is full grown and giant. Good luck with the geltek soaked food - I found filling a shotglass 1/4 the way with geltek and letting the food sit overnight in the fridge before serving made it really full of the stuff and easy to suck into the dropper
Hugs

[Jase]

congrats! can't wait to see some pictures of your little guys.