The Puffer Forum

Gsp tank is 45 gallons. ammonia 0, nitrate 0, nitrite 0, ph 7.6. salt is at .002. Did water change last night. She's been acting funny for about a week now. not active like she used to be. Tonight I found her on bottom of tank just lying there. Turned light on and she became alittle more active but really not her self. We moved about a week ago and had to move her. Since then she's been acting kinda funny. She has the black stressed out on her belly. It comes and goes. She's not eating like she normally does. She does eat but not as much as she did in the beginning. I only feed her every other day, but she eats enough for her belly to get fat. She's hiding in her cave a lot and not swimming around like she did at the other house. She was out almost all day. Did we just really piss her off.

In the past 2 weeks she went from 29 gallon to 45 gallon to moving an hour away, back into her 45 gallon. We've been moved for a 10 days now, and then last night water change cause that's her weekly water change.

Can anyone think of what might be wrong? Is she just REALLY stressed out cause I heard GSP are really moody.
Jezebel is my first GSP and I've had her about 2 months now.

tell me about the tank transfer itself...

did you keep the gravel wet, did you keep the filter wet..

did you transfer any water....


I think you may have knocked your cycle, and your puffer could be suffering from toxins in the tank...

a reading of 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite 0 nitrate is highly unlikely considering you've just moved, and a reading of 0 nitrate is a strong sign that either your tank is not cycled or your test kits are out of date/ no longer working...

are they liquid test kits?

Can you get to a LFS to get a second test done...


He MAY just be annoyed about being moved about, but there may also be a problems with your water...
so do a 50% water change straight away and see if there is an improvement.

Was there any significant temperature change?

this is matt, jodi's husband.

sand stayed wet, about 1/2" of water
all decorations and filter media was transfered in bin with water from tank.
all water but about 3 gallons was transfered.
temp may have dropped during the move but temp of old house and new house is the same, (water stays about 82)
fish time out of setup tank during move: about 4 hours.
time without airstone: maybe 5 min total
time in transit: 1 hour
time out of water: 10 seconds (in net)
transfered fish in bin with 15 gallons of water, nothing else in it but airstone, no chance of damage or crushing,

doubt the tank even lost cycle due to it being a near 95% move, everything stayed wet. (with her actual tank water)
two ghost shrimp actually made the move in the tank with the sand, lol

about the only thing i can think of is obviously the unknown, or our irregular habit of lights. were up late at night and dont have a set time to turn on lights. ive noticed my breeding convicts being confused sometimes by the 3pm turn on and 3am turn off, while they have some outside lightfrom 7am to 3pm also, so they only get total dark for a few hours...

matt

oh and I made a mistake about the nitrate is was at 5.0 I put a dose of amquel in but that's never made her act funny.

What's the Amquel for? There is no ammonia. As long as the nitrate remains <20, the parameters are fine. Puffers are very sensitive to changes in their environment. I moved my fahaka from a small 55g to a 125g thinking he's be thrilled with his new, huge digs. He went on a hunger strike for 2 weeks. There is an article on how to entice a puffer to eat, in our Library.

Amquel was for adding some water to top off tank, to make it safe for the tank. She's still acting not herself, not eating but I guess it could be the stress of the move. My husband did notice one thing. One side of her "gills" are working fine but the other side doesn't seem to be breathing if you guys know what I mean. Could we have hurt her moving we were SO CAREFUL and made the fish tanks our last trip so we had nothing but the fish and tanks for a trip..well we have 5 tanks also LOL.
My husband wants to do a water change, but we just did one. Should I put her in a hospital tank and use Melafix to see if that one side opens up or starts working again?
Or just leave her alone and she if she perks back up but jeez it's been over a week that she's been like this. Just afraid if I wait it out I'll wake up and she'll be dead.

Putting a fish in a hospital tank, unless it fully cycled at the same SG, is more likely to kill it than help in any way.

Our hospital tank is fully cycled all we would have to do is raise the salt to the same level. Right now she's only at .0004.
She's been at .0002 for 3 weeks and .0004 for 3 days because of our move and everything.

I guess at this point we'll wait and see if she gets better...but I'm afraid if she keeps going this way she'll die.

No one can pin point what may be wrong and I can't find anything online of what's causing her behavior.

I guess I just really pissed Jezebel off..lol kinda funny but sad in a way too.

maybe she got damaged when you took her out with a net..

this is never advisable with puffers as they have very sensitive skin, and can also puff whilst out of the water, meaning they inhale air not water and can get stuck that way..

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if you do move her again, scoop her out in a mug or bowl, so she is never out of the water....


If your parameters are good, and your temp is spot on then it's just a bit of a waiting game... try live shrimp... never seen a puffer refuse them!

Yeah I'm just going to watch her and see is she gets better, I feed her krill and she normaly eats that, plus she likes pond snails. The funny thing is I hear that they like ghost shrimp..well I have two in her tank that have been with her since day one (probably close totwo months) and she doesn't eat them...she treats them like a tank mate. It is the most funniest thing I've seen. They will swim right past her mouth and she doesn't eat them at all or doesn't attack or nip at them. My husband and I have laughed about that many of times.

Jezebel is quite a girl lol...moody, picky but we love her

t1gerbee I see in your signature that you have Convicts. My husband has a convicts only tank and we just had babies about a month ago..there everywhere lol !!
The really sad thing is Matt was vaccuming out his tank and the mom jump in front of the hose and got hurt so we put in the hospital tank with some melafix to help her fin that got hurt and just when he was thinking of putting her back in he came home to find her on the floor. We guessed that she was tryingto get back to her babies.
That was sad but the babies are doing great with daddy now. But this our first time breeding and having little convicts all over the place they are so cute!!

Thanks for all your help with Jezebel I'll post if she gets worse or better!

I keep female only convicts to stop naughty behaviour.. as they breed easily and i wouldn't know what to do with all the babies...

well done on raising the babies, sad that mum jumped though...

You can safely add Melafix to your main tank. Discontinue the Amquel, use Prime only. Try looking at the gill with a flashlight for a closer view to see if it's inflamed or has worms in there.

So far I can't see any worms in there. It just looks completely shut. But today she was swimming around until I turned her light on then she went into her cave. I don't have bright lights I have the cool blue on all my tanks so it's not so bright.

Is amquel that bad of a product? We only use it during wc. Cause my husband loves it.

So Pufferpunk I can safetly add Melafix in her tank for a treatment for the 7 days and see if that makes her better.

OK I just saw her poop, can't believe that cause she hasn't eaten in like 3 or 4 days now really. It was clear looking, kinda not normal.