The Puffer Forum

Hi there, I just discovered this forum, and I'm hoping you guys can help me out with my puffer issue! I've had an F8 for the last four months, in a 15 gallon tank, with one ghost shrimp as a tank mate. He ate all the other ones, but seems to have made friends with this one. I bought the tank from someone who'd had it running for several years, and so I was able to set it up with a few danios and my water parameters were great from the beginning throughout. After 2 months of 3 danios in the tank and a Betta, I switched the tank to brackish, and added crushed gravel as my substrate. The tank is filtered with two submerged filters, each good for a 10 gallon. Right now my Amonnia is 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate's higher at 20. Can't do a PH test right now. Salinity is around 1.014. He's feed bloodworms and shrimp, with some snails once a week, my last water change was 2 days ago.

So, now the problem. Today he's been incredibly sluggish. He leans against a corner with his chin all day, and doesn't seem interested in food. When he does stop leaning, he swims very slowly and seems to bump into everything. I know he can see alright, though about 3 months ago he did have a problem with an eye clouding up, which went away in a couple of days. He seems to be having trouble swimming, and he goes around with his nose sticking up, nearly swimming vertically. This is all highly unusual for him, so I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for him!

I think the trouble may be that your SG is just too high for him. F8's seem to prefer an sg of about 1.005, about 1/3 what you have him at. I"d try doing a water change to decrease the SG by about .002 now, getting it down to about 1.012, and weekly hereafter until it's down to about SG 1.004-1.006

Whoopsies. My bad, that's a typo. Should have been 1.004. Sorry, long night studying for finals here.

My next guess is bad bloodworms or bloodworm allergie - try just the shrimp and snails for a while. To stimulate eating, a small earthworm is great.

This morning when I went to my puffer's tank, he was wedged in between the heater and the filter, unmoving. He looked dead, so I went to my final and came back to take him out. I had him in the net and he wasn't moving at all, but I waited for a minute just in case. All of a sudden he looked up at me and started swimming around, but soon fell to the bottom and lay there, breathing heavily. He stayed there for a few minutes, then darted up to the surface and brought his face out of the water, and then repeated this action several times. Then he fell back down, tried to move again, and couldn't, and now is just lying there huffing. He looks like he's on death's door. I did water change to see if that would help. Any other suggestions?

Any chance of a heater malfunction?

The heater is working fine, his water temperature is normal - or was I should say. My poor little thing died. Thanks for the suggestions though, I appreciate the help.

Sorry to hear that

Sorry for your loss, I lost one of my puffers too and it sucks big time!