The Puffer Forum

Ok so I'm not sure if my new f8's are just small and skinny or small with ips? I have 3 F8's in a 50g. Cycle water parameters are in check. HAVE not made this tank brackish yet. alittle confused as how to add the marine salt in safety. anyways. there is no signs of stringy poo or anything liek that they are very active eat good. I feed them once a day. only krill atm. due to lack of lfs around my area. Also I have the video instead of pictures because they move to damn much haha. hope it is bright and clear enough.

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I don't know what to tell you about the IP's but I can give you some advice for switching to brackish. When you do the next water change, add in some Marine/Sea salt but not aquarium salt. Make sure you get a hydrometer to test the salt level. You do not want to change you salt level by more than .002 at a time because it will mess up your bacteria cycle. Also, make sure the salt is completely dissolved in the water (you may need a powerhead) or it may burn the fish's gills. I would start by adding small amounts of salt (maybe several tablespoons, depending on the size of your aquarium) and gradually increase to about 1.006-008 over the next month or two. Your F8's will be much happier and their colors will become more vibrant!

They seemed to be at the top of the tank a lot there. Are they like this a lot of was it just cause you were there and they were begging or something?

From what I could see, they are definitely on the skinny side, and a puffer with IPs will have that same sort of stomach shape - but you mention that their poop is OK, so it's possible they just need a few good meals. You can either try feeding them more than what you would normally for a week or two and see if they flesh out and gain weight, or you can immediately start treating them for IPs. I must warn you I had a puffer that was like yours, skinny but overall seemingly healthy, and went with the first approach. He ate well at first, and was looking like he was starting to put on some weight, but about that time he stopped eating and I ended up losing him because I waited too long to treat him.

Krill is not the best food for them. Get some snails, not too big, for them - you can get them for free from Walmart if they have any, although you might have to buy a little something to get them to do it, or you can order live snails from ebay. Also go to a grocery store that has fresh seafood and buy a live oyster or clam or black mussel and some fresh or frozen (not cooked!) shrimp and use those for food. (Break open the mollusks and divide up the flesh and put the little pieces in the freezer.) Frozen or live bloodworms are a good treat too, if you can find them.

They look a little skinny, but its hard to tell with the video, its blurry and dark.

Was that after a feeding, before a feeding or in between feedings? When you feed them, how round/full do you let their bellies get? If you feed them until their bellies are nice and round, how quickly do they go back to sunken in a bit like that? Within a few hours? Within a day? Within two days?

Definately try to find food other than krill, its not very healthy for them and a diet solely of krill can easily lead to lockjaw. Frozen bloodworms, live blackworms, SNAILS, etc. Go to the grocery store and get some uncooked, shell on shrimp.. freeze it and thaw out one shrimp, let them chew on it until their bellies are nice and round.. if there's a lot left put it in a ziploc bag and save it in the fridge for the next day. Most of my puffers won't eat it after the second day though.



As far as adding the salt, if you really can't wrap your mind around the math, you have a 50 gallon tank so its easy to just go really really slow with it. Every time you do a water change, add an additional tablespoon of marine salt to your new water.. Granted, a tablespoon in 50 gallons won't barely be anything, but if it makes you feel better to start adding it (its good for the fish), but not to have to worry about adding too much at once, that's a good place to start while you try to figure it out.

For what its worth.. if I'm doing the math right, lets assume your tank holds 45 gallons of water (after decor/substrate). A quarter cup of Instant Ocean to one gallon of water makes full seawater 1.024ish. Okay, I'm doing this the long and hard way, but follow me... So to make your entire tank 1.024, you'd need 11 1/4 cups of Instant ocean. Since you only want 1.002 your first week (freshwater is 1.000, you don't want to raise it more than .002 a week), to bring it to 1.002 you'd need to add just under one cup of Instant Ocean. Okay, you probably didn't follow my math and I don't know if I could explain it.. that whole 1 in front of the decimals throws it off, you can't look at that when doing the math... If you ignore it for now and look at it this way...

if 11.25 cups would give you .024 and you want .002.. .024 divided by .02 is 12.

So you'd take the 11.25 and divide it by 12.. that gives you .9375.. so just under one cup, to bring 45 galllons of freshwater up to 1.002.

So, basically what I'm saying even if you didn't follow that math, is that as long as you add LESS than a cup of Instant Ocean to your tank, its not going to raise your salinity more than .002, which keeps your bacteria safe and gets some salt into your water which is good for the F8's.

Its safer if you have a hydrometer or refractometer to double check your actual readings, but this should give you a guideline of how much salt you can safely add. If you feel more comfortable with it, add only a quarter cup or half cup, until you have measuring devices to back you up.

When it comes time to do water changes, it gets a little more complicated, and its just easier if you have a measuring device so you can match your newly mixed up water to the tank (or increase it, if you are raising your salinity). But adding up to a cup to your freshwater right now should put you in a safe place for your first week/waterchange until you can do some more reading and understand the way it works better.

@Riggers: When EVER I go to the tank they always come up to me basically where ever my face is at, so they were just begging.

@Myaj: This was in between feedings., Ive only had those particular puffers for 1 week, the other one I have in there is quite healthy and a nice round belly which is what I was comparing the other two to. As for their bellies they look round? when I first got them they had random bumps after they finished eating but they went away quickly after a day or two haven't noticed it since. it takes usually a day for their bellies to get like that again. it's definitely not a few hours.

and as for the salt I think I have gotten my head around it now. so say I do a 50% change I want all of my water I ADD to be .008 or a little lower so when the tank is full to 100% it dilutes to .002.

Boris_puffer wrote: and as for the salt I think I have gotten my head around it now. so say I do a 50% change I want all of my water I ADD to be .008 or a little lower so when the tank is full to 100% it dilutes to .002.

.004 for the new water if you are replacing 50% of the water. when you add it in the new water will be diluted by 50%, so starting with .008 means that the SG after you add the new water would be .004, which is too much. start with 50% at 1.004 or alittle less and the end result will be 1.002 (or less if you're starting a little shy of .004-- better to go slow IMO)

yeah that was a miss type on my part sorry >_<

Sounds like you got the salt thing

If their bellies are like that by the next day, I would say they are probably not in any immediate danger and probably just need to put on some weight after the stress of the fish store and moving to their new home.

Personally, I deworm all my fish once or twice a year, because I feel its better, and ALL wild caughts before I introduce them to any of my established tanks as soon as I know they are eating well and healthy enough to handle it.. but that's just personal preference. Other people prefer not to deworm.

yeah I dotn have a Q tank or I would have done that. I'm actually treating them all for ich atm.

Simply increasing the SG by .002 per week will kill the ich just fine in a couple weeks, no medications needed.

yeah? well I guess tomorrow I'll stop the treatment and start the salt haha. I would do it right now but I dont have any large buckets I can mix the salt into all I have is a gallon jug I have been useing >_<

ok so update... one of the puffers DEFINITLY has IP's I feel he will die. he went from eating and swimming around overnihgt to almost intoverted the nex morning. hes just sitting ont he bottom of the tank skinny not eating. I went and got the Jungle Labs fizz tabs this morning and put them in. but I fear its to late for niko.

good part of this though is katy and sir noms-alot dont look like they has it yet they are all plump and healthy so they will be getting their preventitive ip treament I suppose.

sad update. so I went and picked up the tabs this morning. put them in... went to work. and came home to a dead Niko

Aw man, what a drag, so sorry to hear that. You tried to save him, and that's more than some people would've done. Frankly sometimes they're just so eaten up with IPs that even though you treat them and the IPs are killed, there's been so much damage to their digestive system that they don't survive the shock of losing all the parasites. Keep treating the tank though...you can't afford to risk the others getting sick.