The Puffer Forum

My husband and I are first time GSP parents, we have done a TON of research about GSPs. We have a puffer, juvenile, in a 29 gallon brackish tank....We just yesterday moved him from a five gallon (I know, this is incredibly too small, we were unaware of our puffer needing so much room)....My husband did a ton of research and found that one juvenile needs 30 gallons to itself, so we immediately bought a bigger tank...We purchased him from Wal-mart, and it told us to put him in aquarium salt water, which we did until we bought marine salt...our test kit has not yet arrived in the mail, it should shortly so i cannot tell you the ph, ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite levels. The temp is now 79, and when we discovered that he was a little lethargic and is now showing symptoms of ich, we went out and bought a heater to raise the temp of the water....the salinity is 1.008...will raising the temp help rid us of ich??? HELP!!!!!

Ashley, scared puffer mom

library/hospital/fwich/

I have read to use salt....i just transferred him yesterday to a brackish tank...do you know if the marine salt would be the right salt to get rid of the ich? the article doesnt say....he had ich when we moved him from the small tank to this much larger tank.....from fresh water (1 tablespoon aquarium salt per 5 gallon tank) to a salinity of 1.007-1.008....also, raised temp?

Marine salt is fine to kill off the ich but 1st I want to know, how did you cycle the tank? As BW? What SG? It is really bad to raise the SG more then .002/week, in a cycled tank, or the biological bed could crash.

I bought TLC to cycle my tank, that was all we could find around here, we didn't really know about cycling the tank until after we had the fish, so when we started the new tank, we added the salt, waited for it to completely cycle through the tank, and then added the appropriate amount of TLC, and waited to put the fish in as it states on the bottle...we also added prime to the water the day we set up the tank, and let it run 24 hours before we added salt and TLC...do you know anything about a product called "tank buddies Ich remover"? It says to use half a fizzing tablet for scaleless fish, the temp is now at 82 degrees to speed up the life cycle of the ich, and I will be doing a 50% water change...is 82 degrees safe for my GSP?

Please do not use meds for puffers with ich. Just follow the directions in that article. Tomorrow, you need to go out & get liquid test kits for ammonia, nitrite & nitrate & keep a close eye on them all. Check out the fishless cycling & emergency cycling articles in our Library, along with the one on keeping GSPs.

I'm not sure what TLC is, but I can confirm at least two products that will immediately create a biological filtration system in your aquarium: Bio-Spira and Dr. Tim's One and Only. These two products are meant for brackish to saltwater whereas SafeStart by Tetra is designated for freshwater usage.

I would highly recommend you purchase one of these, since it is extremely difficult to find brackish filter media to seed your tank with the necessary bacteria to bring your ammonia and nitrites to zero.

While I've used both products, I prefer Bio-Spira over Dr. Tim's. Drs Foster and Smith currently has a 20 percent sale on the stuff, so you can get a pretty good deal on it especially if you are a first time costumer and use Ebates & PufferPunk's coupon thing, I think it ends up balancing out the price of shipping.

Aside from that, best of luck with your new fish.

You should absolutely not use these products for fishless cycling. I have tried both ways (just for kicks) and the only time it has failed me is when I tried it with a fishless cycle. It is designed to be poured directly into your filter, not the water column, and then have an immediate biological waste source. If you add it then add a food source and have to wait for it to decay the bacteria will starve in that short wait period and the tank will remain uncycled.

What about adding straight ammonia?

You want a biological source. The thing with fishless cycling a tank is that your trying to breed nitrifying bacteria so you can add your fish. When you add Biospira or Safestart you are putting in the bacteria that you are trying to create in a fishless cycle. Why continue to try to produce the bacteria when it's already there?