white circles on green spotted puffer

[SarahJane]

Hi

I purchased 2 juvenile green spotted puffers about a week ago. One has now developed small round white circles on it's back. It started with one and now there are three. They are completley flush with the body and do not stick up at all and have no fuzzy bits on them as you might expect with mould. They seem itchy as he soemtimes appears to try and itch himself on one of the plants. He is active and feeding well and is not showing any other symptoms of distress at the moment. Occasioanlly they go a bit dull and have slightly grey bellies but this disappears as soon as you approach the tank and they colour up. I don't think it is damage as a result of fighting as he and his tank mate seem to get on quite well at the moment. His tank mate is not showing any symptoms at the moment.

Details as requested above.

2 juvenile puffers in 120l tank which has been set up for about a month and cycled with tetras.
Ph5.5 (i know this needs to be more alklaline so I need to sort this out - could hte bogwood in the tank be a prob?)
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates <5mg litre (very faint colour but def not above 5)
SAlinity 1.004 (this is what they were in at the pet shop and I plan to increase this to fully marine as they get older).

They spent the first couple of days polishing off soem snails (they almost certainly did overeat in the first couple of days) that were present in the tank and I am now feeding them on bloodworms (one small block of frozen bloodworms every two days)
I have a full test kit so was planning to change the water as and when required.

I really don't want to loose them so I hope you can help.

[Iliveinazoo]

You haven't changed the water yet?

[Myaj]

Can you get a picture?

Are they rings with a dark center, or solid white circles? If they are rings, they are more than likely healing bite scars.

If not, how large are they? Are they the size of a pinhead or maybe a pencil eraser?

[Christemo]

And for 2 GSPs, you'd need a 230 liter tank. My guess is ich.

[StormySkiez]

Sounds like it could be bite marks. I witnessed it happen w/ my 2 puffs. The end result was the bite left a round cirlce white scar. We treated the tank w/ melafix as recommended because we saw there was 2 tiny punture holes in the middle of the circle, to prevent infection. I would watch for aggression between your gsp's. My puff has been bit several times. No treatment. Added more plants to break up the line of sight and I'm real careful at feeding time.

[Agnate]

The driftwood can be partially responsible for the low pH (it does technically lower it), but the extremely low pH is more likely caused from a lack of water hardness. This can easily be corrected with the crushed coral/coral rock suggestion I've made below. Whenever you switch to a larger tank, you can change your substrate over to a calcium-based mineral (such as aragonite), which will assure that your pH stays where it's supposed to be (in the 7.8 - 8.2 range for brackish/marine tanks).

Your pH is extremely low (or did you mistype 5.5), especially if your SG is above 1.000 (which, I believe, you said was at 1.004). You should head to the fish store and pick up some crushed coral substrate (the one that looks like gravel or pebbles, not sand), or white coral rock chunks.

If you get the crushed coral substrate (see here) [Petsmart.com], pick up a mesh bag from the fish store as well (usually used for filter media in hang-on-back filters). Rinse some crushed coral and fill this bag with it, then place it in your filter (if you have room), or place it near the output of your filter (so the water passes around/through it as much as possible). If you can afford the larger bag of the substrate (the 20-30 lbs bag), I would get it, as it sounds like you're going to need to use this stuff as substrate later on to get your pH up (as it should be closer to 7.8 - 8.2), but don't change your substrate any time soon.

If you get the coral rock stuff (I can't find a picture, but it's very very white and heavy like normal rock, usually with lots of holes/pores), just put a bunch of chunks into your tank (it's white stone, so it looks pretty). I paid about $16 CAN for maybe 5 lbs of rock.

Make sure that you DON'T use the pH-changing liquids that stores try to sell. The liquids are rarely useful for what we need in the aquarium hobby, and you're much better to adjust your pH with methods that are considerably less prone to error.

[Pufferpunk]

Sounds like a typical discription of bites from another puffer. If he is getting more of them, they should be seperated.

[SarahJane]

Hi

Thanks to everyone for their replies. I went back tot he pet shop I bough them from and their puffers were covered in them and said they were bite marks. Almost the same day as I posted the question they suddenly started healing and are looking pretty good now, so I think that is the explanation. I don't want to seperate them yet as I think the bites may have been picked up at the pet shop.

Thanks for the suggestions re the ph I have removed the bogwood and done a water change and it seems to have done the trick for now but I will keep an eye on it. I guess you can order crushed coral o n the internet? The pet shop suggested Sodium bircarb .. but soemthing tells me that is prob not a good idea..?!

As for the tank size ...yep don't worry...I am looking forward to getting a bigger one! How long do they take to reach maturity? At what size should they go fully marine?

Thanks
Sarah

[Agnate]

They take *forever* to grow (I've had my two Ceylons, which are similar to GSPs, for about 10 months now, and they've barely grown at all, max of 0.5 inches of growth at an original 1.5 inches in length). For full marine, you can pretty much put them there anytime after 1.5 inches. There's no real "set" rule about it, it's kind of just when you think your puffer wants to be there. I was noticing that my Ceylons kept preferring higher SG levels, so I decided to put them into full marine and they absolutely loved it.

In regards to the sodium bicarbonate, you can *technically* use it, but I would suggest against it. The reason is that, like liquid pH adjusters, the sodium bicarbonate breaks down rather quickly in aquariums (especially with water changes), which leads to large fluctuations of pH over shorter periods of time (which isn't easy on most fish). Also, it's easy to overdo it with chemicals, since it's so concentrated. Using items like bogwood and crushed coral/aragonite allows for slower adjustments of the pH and are limited to a threshold (for instance, crushed coral won't bring your pH above 8.2-8.4). Then again, I'm risk averse and I'm terrible for remembering to dose things on a regular basis, so I prefer to pick solutions that are a "do it right the first time with almost no maintenance", as opposed to a "crash the tank a couple times before I learn how to maintain it".

[StormySkiez]

Crushed Coral can be bought online and in most fish stores. Adding sea shells from the pet store also can raise the ph a little. It takes about 3 years for gsp's to reach about 6 inches but it is best to get them into a large enough home asap to house both of them into full maturity. My gsp's also have grown about 1/2 inch in a year. You can go into full marine very slow over the next 3 years. An article on here suggests brackish at around 2 inches. I opted to stay low brackish at 1.008 for a while because it is much cheaper. It gives me time to decide if I really want a full marine tank and to buy the different equipment and larger tank. You do not have to go full marine.