The Puffer Forum

Ok, so I got a 30 gallon tank and i moved my porcupine and sharpnose puffer into it from a 10 gallon tank. the water was cycled water from our 180 gallon tank that only had rocks in it. they were put in on wends of last week. they have been fine ever since. but today i got home from work and my porcupine puffer doesnt look too good. it is breathing really hard and sometimes it looks like she is coffing. she has puffed up once but deflated. i dont know where the water paramaters are but i know the salinity was really high last night and i started to bring it down. it was almost at 1.029 yesterday afternoon. today i got it down to alittle above 1.025
the tank only has the porcupine, the sharpnose, some hermits, 3 mexican turbo snails, and i think 5 nasarious snails (how ever you spell it)
the sharpnose is fine, he doesnt look stressed or anything. but the porcupine is starting to get me worried.
the temp is 80 degrees, i fed them lastnight. i feed ever other day and its usually a musle, they get silversides, but they dont like it that much. they dont eat the hermits or the snails. she has sucked up air before, but she always gets it out. she doesnt appear to have any air in her right now.

can someone please help me out. i donno what to do. i was just watching her and she put her face to the side of the glass and slid down all the way to the bottom and she just layed there. i tapped on the glass a little and she got up. i just dont know what to do. please help!

The problem is that the 10g is way, way too small, and their poo/pee is building up very quickly and poisoning your fish. You need to do water changes. The water from your other tank was not "cycled." The rock from your tank holds the bacteria that handles the waste, not the water. However, your salinity increase killed off that bacteria.

You need to do the biggest water change that you can, right away, and do it every day.

Can you get a test kit that measures ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates? Can you move them into a bigger tank, or even a big clean plastic container?

P.S. Welcome to the forum. You're in the right place for help. Good luck.

Thank you, but the problem is they are in the 30 gallon tank.. they were in the 10 while they were babies. Now that they have grown we moved them to the 30 gallon around a week ago.

The 30 gallon tank was not started with all new saltwater. We used completely cycled water from our 180gal. and the sand was live sand freshly purchased from the LFS (local fish store). The rock we used was all cured rock that either came from the 10 gal. that they were previously in or was left over from when my boyfriend setup his 55g reef.

i added a bit more fresh water earlier to bring down the salt level, and turned off one of the power heads. we had CRAZY circulation. (the boyfriend swears it will keep algea away) she seemes to be doing a bit better. we are currently making RO water to do a water change tonight. i hope she will be better by morning.

i just dont understand how she was fine at noon and i came home at 5 and she looked like she was going to die.

thanks for the help

There is no such thing as "cycled" water. The bacteria you need is on solid surfaces. What you should do is take all the sand, rock, decor & filters from the 10g & move it over to the 30g. Then the tank would be cycled.

Start saving up for a 100g tank. Keep the toby in the 30g & keep the porc in the 100g. He's gonna need it sooner than you think!