The Puffer Forum

Hello,

I have a gsp that appears to have black chin. My water parameters are:

SG - 1.008
Ph - 8.4
Nitrate - 20 ppm
Nitrite - 4.0 ppm
Ammonia - 1.5 ppm, and I know this is WAY high, but I have been treating with Amquel+ and it doesn't seem to be working I have treated the tank 3 different times and neither time it it take the ammonia levels down to acceptable levels. It helped with the nitrate and nitrite levels, but not with the ammonia. In light of that, I've been performing water changes more frequently (every 3 days / performed a 50% change last night and the ammonia is still high) and treating each water change with Stress Zyme(beneficial bacteria) along with Aquasafe of course. Would a bacterial bloom cause the ammonia levels to spike like that? Essentially, am I adding too much strees zyme when it's not needed or am I adding not enough? Also, I recently returned 6 fish that seemed to have put a big bioload on my tank (20 gal), would their residual still cause high levels? PLease help on this issue. I can't seem to get my ammonia levels under control.

Some history: My tank has been set-up for around 4 months and was originally cycled with zebra danios. They seem to be doing fine as does my F8 under the current conditions. While my GSP has seemed to improved since the other fish are gone now, he still has what appears to be as black chin. Sometimes it spreads to his sides but never really on his belly. Both puffers developed Ick when I first got them, and both were treated succesfully. Follow-up was also performed with Maracyn and Maracyn-two.

Overall, he's also never really had great color all around. While he does have color on the very top of his back, he doesnt look bright green all around like other photos I've seen on this site. He even changes colors. I understand the camoflouging thing but he never gets really green. I thought brackish conditions would improve this? Also, he's never really had a big round belly like my F8 has. He swims and eats normally. I feed them freeze dried shrimp, krill, brine shrimp, forzen bloodworms, and live snails. One other thing I've noticed lately is that he appears to be burping almost. He opens and closes his mouth rapidly as his stomach moves. Doesn't look normal to me.

Overall, should my GSP still have black chin with the nitrate levels around 20ppm? I'm trying help bring him back to health. PLease help.

*I'll try to get a picture posted soon so everyone has a better idea of what I'm talking about*

The ammonia and nitrite are the big issues here.

IMHO stresszyme is snakeoil. Bio-spira is the only cycling product I have seen produce results. I suggest trying to find some freshwater bio-spira, as the salt water one won't work at that salinity.

That sort of spike indicates that you have killed off your cycled bacteria and are re-cycling as we speak.

How quick did you increase the salinity?

Until you get Bio-Spira in there, start doing large (80%) daily, or 2x daily water changes, to keep the fish from becoming poisoned.

Can I get bio-spira otc at Petsmart or Petco? I tried searching their sites but couldn't find it.

Also, how would I have killed off my cycled bacteria? By putting stresszyme in there?

I've been increasing the salinity slowly. It was originally at 1.005 for my F8 but have been increasing it slightly for the health of my gsp.

Thanks for all the help.

There can be many reasons the biological balance in an established tank is thrown off. Usually it is from overfeeding, w/rotting foods somewhere (under decor, inside plant leaves, etc) or overstocking (especially adding too many/large fish at once).

My tank has crashed 3x:
1-I found a rotting carcass inside a hollow ornament,
2-raised the SG too fast,
3-had hubby feed tank while I was on vacation (he thought they looked "hungry"...).

Once I discovered the problem, did an 80% water change & added Bio-Spira, the tank was perfect.

You may have to look at a Mom & Pop type LFS for B-S, or order it online: http://fishstoretn.com/bio_spira.html

Pufferpunk wrote:There can be many reasons the biological balance in an established tank is thrown off. Usually it is from overfeeding, w/rotting foods somewhere (under decor, inside plant leaves, etc) or overstocking (especially adding too many/large fish at once).

My tank has crashed 3x:
1-I found a rotting carcass inside a hollow ornament,
2-raised the SG too fast,
3-had hubby feed tank while I was on vacation (he thought they looked "hungry"...).

Once I discovered the problem, did an 80% water change & added Bio-Spira, the tank was perfect.

You may have to look at a Mom & Pop type LFS for B-S, or order it online: http://fishstoretn.com/bio_spira.html

Thanks pufferpunk. Hopefully I can find b-s locally as I'd like to get it in there asap. I think my crash is due to #2 - as my levels were fine with FW and have started to decline when switching to brackish.

Also, is it really OK to do 80% water changes daily?!?

Absolutely, as long as you keep the same SG & temp (& of course, use a good dechlor). When #1 happened, it took me 2 weeks to find that culprit. Ammonia would rise to >8 & nitrItes >5! Some days, I had to do WC 2x/day, just to keep the fish from bloating up, gasping at the surface for more O2. Used up a whole bag of salt! Be sure you have no ammonia removers in the tank when you adsd the B-S. It will kill off the live bacteria you will be adding.

10-4. Thanks for the tip. I'll let you know how it goes and will try to post a pic shortly. Thx

Adding loads of poxy Stress Zyme can send the NH3 and NO2 readings out of whack, so it's poss that the levels are actually not that high, but still do the 80% changes till your readings are both zero.
I really do wish they'd stop selling that junk...I fell foul of it at first as well and felt like a dumb buttocks when PP put me straight.
Pami.

So, I've been performing 80% water changes, and it has reduced my ammonia in half, which is great. Although, my GS Puff doesnt seem to be getting better. He ate a whole snail 2 days ago, but hasn't seem interested in eating since. He won't come out off his hole to eat, not even for bloodworms that fall to the bottom. Just last night he was laying on the bottom of the tank with just 1 gill clamped(weird), his tail folded in a u shape and on diaganol slant So I shook him up a bit cause I didnt wnat to see him belly up in the morning. He doesnt seem to have an external parasite, and I've already treated him with maracyn and maracyn-two for gram negative and gram-positive parasites. Any other ideas on what it could be? He still has black mostly around his chin and sometimes on his sides. Thanks for the help.

When you treated your Puff with antibiotics, did you move him to a hospital tank or did you put the meds in your display tank? Antibiotics will kill your beneficial nitrifying bacteria and cause your tank to crash.

Feathers&Fins wrote:When you treated your Puff with antibiotics, did you move him to a hospital tank or did you put the meds in your display tank? Antibiotics will kill your beneficial nitrifying bacteria and cause your tank to crash.

I put it directly in the tank. I don't have a secondary one I can use. Thats part of the problem. I've had to use all these meds and somewhere along the line my tank crashed. Thats whay I was using stresszyme but now I hear it's junk so no more. I'll be picking up Bio-spira over the weekend. Guess I'll be doing massive water changes until I get it in there.

I just don't want Frankie to die. He's the only one that has problems. My F8 looks great under the same conditions, which leads me to believe he has a parasite or bug of some sort. Just can't figure out what it is.

So I just added som B-S about an hour ago and my readings are:

nitrAte: 20ppm
nitrIte: 2.0ppm
ph - 8.4
ammonia - 0.25ppm

Im hoping the readings will continue to drop over the next week or so. Also had a chance to snap a few pics of him.

Here's his black chin

And you can notice some slight coloration on his side in this pic Although in these pics he's looking better then he has been the last few weeks due to the frequent water changes.

Did you do a large water change before adding the B-S? Did you add it to the filter? Did you add carbon to the filter to remove all meds that might kill off the B-S?

Pufferpunk wrote:Did you do a large water change before adding the B-S? Did you add it to the filter? Did you add carbon to the filter to remove all meds that might kill off the B-S?

I did the first 2, although I didnt add fresh carbon. It's only a week old. But I took a look at the filter this morning, and it has a bunch of rust color film on it, so Im guessing thats the bacteria? I've seen it before on the filter, and always thought it was algae of some sort and always cleaned it off, Doh!