The Puffer Forum

hello,

i have a rather young GSP (about an inch long) who is still in fw as he was at the store, i'll be acclimating him towards bw soon. my story is the oh so common "i've got to rescue this cute little guy from walmart."

anyhow, i've done quite a bit of reading and i think i'm taking care of him quite well so far. i'm feeding him frozen brine shrimp, alternating between once and twice a day and being careful not to give him too much. his belly gets nice and round. i've been trying to track down some snails but haven't had much luck so far. if i go another week or so without finding some locally, i'll overpay and get some online.

my question is, are these guys unusually sensitive to light? if i leave his light on for too long he begins acting very bizarre, i have thought he would surely die. it's only happened twice. the first time, he just stopped using one of his side fins and began bumping into everything. the second time, his entire tail seemed to be locked into a spasm and was wrapped around against his body, he was basically curled into a ball and again bumping into everything. i thought he was a goner but both times as soon as i turned the light off, he began acting normal and soon "went to sleep."

is this normal? is it a sign of something else?

Frozen brine shrimp, even thawed and vitamin-presoaked, is a great appetite stimullant, but it is not very nutritious. That is not at all an adequate diet for a GSP. See:

library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

There are other articles in the library here that you might want to read..

Give the puffer a regular light cycle (by a timer if possible), Plus, they should always have a refuge where they can rest,nap, or sleep. That refuge can be an artificial plant with overhanging leaves, an angled rock which shelters but is not confining, etc. That will provide the fish with shade when it wants to be out of the light.

HTH

he has driftwood and plants that he often "explores" and hides under. i also have freeze-dried bloodworms and krill that i vary with. like i said, i'm looking for a source for snails.

my question was really if this is normal behavior or if it's a sign of something. i haven't found anything about it while reading.

edit: i hope this didn't come off as snotty, it wasn't the intention. i realized it might also be helpful to ask if anyone has any suggestions on where to find snails locally. any ideas?

If you have any fish stores that actually carry live plants, they may have some pond or ramshorn snails hitchhiking in.

In Dallas, there is probably a fair chance you have a fishkeeping club of hobbiests in the area.. contact them and see if any of their members have pest snails (pond or ramshorn, not malaysain trumpets) that they would give or sell to you.

As far as the light thing.. sometimes puffers "go nocturnal" and do most of their hunting/swimming at night. But also, keep in mind that puffers tend to curl up to sleep, and when you startle them awake, they often have trouble "uncurling", or maybe one fin doesn't quite work right.. so at first they may swim very erratically, bumping into things, sort of curled up on themselves.. and if you startled it, the darting around would be a part of that. So in that case, yes, this behavior is very normal. Puffers do nap all curled up and have trouble swimming straight immediately after waking up.

RTR's suggestion of putting the light on a timer will help this quite a bit, as the puffer will learn the schedule very quickly and won't be startled when the light does turn on.

he doesn't do it when i first turn the light on. he does it after it's been on for a while.

my GSP used to do that too when i first got him. i asked the person at the LFS and she said it was clamped fins. she said it could b from too much ammonia in the tank and she suggested weekly water changes. i have been doing the weekly water changes for a while now and they have been fine. i also use a live bacteria called special blend once a week and that seems to keep them doing well. (im not sure if that was really the reason and/or soultion to the problem but ever since ive been doin more frequent cleanings they are great)

hmm. i'll try to make my water changes more frequent. his tank is also smaller than what's recommended. i figured he didn't quite need 30 gallons just yet since he's only an inch long and he's the only thing in there besides a couple of oto's.

mine are the same way i have 2 GSP's that are in a small tank rite now and they are both only about an inch and a half long. they will b in a bigger tank very shortly. but the smaller tank also adds to the need for frequent water changes. i think we are in the same boat

Have u tried Fish Gallery for snails? I am going there on saturday to try and get some. Also picking up my DP

Just a general note: We commonly buy small, immature, fish. I much prefer that way. But, if you really want healthy happy fish, you are best starting with the tank which will be the fish's permanent home. Fish in captivity are stunted more often than not because folks do not know or care what the needs of the adult fish should be. Puffer keepers, Cichlid keepers, catfish keepers, loach keepers, and others need to do better. These and others are generally long-lived to very long-lived fish. Start them right in a full-sized tank, house them with a proper setup and conditions (including minimum 50% water changes weekly), and the odds are that they will be with you 10-20 years. If they are not in full-sized and properly set tanks, they need much more care - I would say a minim of 2 water changes at the 50% level weekly (some other short-comings cannot as easily be compensated for - such as proper substrate), and possibly more.

The all too common bit about "moving the fish up in tank size as it 'needs' it" is the recipe for stunted fish. This is, sadly, experience speaking, not theory. I have stunted fish before, but I do not anymore. If the fish has to be housed short-term in a smaller tank for QT, I will do that. As soon is QT is done, it moves to its permanent home. If I cannot do that, I do not buy the fish.

HTH

brooklyn wrote:my GSP used to do that too when i first got him. i asked the person at the LFS and she said it was clamped fins. she said it could b from too much ammonia in the tank and she suggested weekly water changes. i have been doing the weekly water changes for a while now and they have been fine. i also use a live bacteria called special blend once a week and that seems to keep them doing well. (im not sure if that was really the reason and/or soultion to the problem but ever since ive been doin more frequent cleanings they are great)

Any bacteria in a bottle you need to add weekly is garbage & a waste of $$$. We suggest weekly water changes for a healthy, cycled tank. Tanks that show even a trace of ammonia need daily WC.

As far as rescuing abused, poorly-kept fish:
http://www.ultimatebettas.com/index.php?showtopic=40563

make no mistake, i intend to put him in a bigger tank long before he gets any bigger. as i understand it, he will be this size for about a year before he starts maturing. i plan on having him in ~30 gallons in less than a month. his size : tank size ratio is much higher than i ever see with larger fish. he has much more space than a fist-sized fish in a 55 gallon tank and i see "pros" doing that all the time. this is far from my first tank, he's just my first puffer.

i've done 2 50% changes since i made this thread and he still seems to act weird if the light's been on for much more than 6 hours. up to then, he acts how i've read healthy puffers tend to act. exploring the tank, playing in bubbles, greeting me and swimming up and down against the glass. i guess he's just a night owl.

as for substrate, am i to understand they prefer sand-like substrates? is crushed coral good?

edit: something i find funny, he seems to actually get *depressed* if i don't interact with him. he likes to flirt with my fingers when i put them near the glass and move them around and likes when i put my face close to the glass. certainly the most unique behavior i've seen out of a fish. i wonder if i need more stuff in the tank for him to explore? right now there's just driftwood arranged so he can move in and out of it. i have already rearranged it once in hopes of giving him new scenery.

CC is fine to use for substrate. That's what I have in my F8's tank, Easy to clean too.

i found a petco with a snail problem. i grabbed some (made sure to only get ramshorns, they did have a bunch of trumpets too) and threw a couple in the tank but i think they're too big for him, he's pretty small. he picked at one for a little but but didn't eat it like i see in the videos online. they're all a bit bigger than his eyes. can he suck them out of their shell like i see the dwarf puffers doing?

they did have some smaller ones in the plant tank that i could easily pick up a bunch of but they're TINY. surely they don't have any nutritional value. even if they don't, should i still get them to keep his beak under control? will he have problems if he tries to eat the ones that are too big for him?

If the snails are too big, I just crush them a little before dropping them in - my 2 GSPs soon munch through the smaller pieces!