The Puffer Forum

Hi!

I feel horrible! I haven't been around for a few days and just haven't seen my F8 puffer (puffy, or Mrs Puffs, whichever you prefer) swimming around normally in a while. She's always been sleeping or very hungry whenever I saw her.


So I've had this 55 gal Brackish water (will check salinity as soon as I wake up in the morning) for one and a half years and had puffy for two years, since she was a tiny baby. And I did my research before I got her so she's been happy, healthy, and very sociable so far.

But I'm so worried about her now. I have 6 mollies in there and two scats (1-2" in diameter) and one of the mollies got some weird bacterial infection (so I diagnosed, looks like fin rot) and I separated her and treated her with trisulfa for 5 days. After 10 days I put her back in the tank, since all her symptoms were gone 2 days after I put her in the hospital tank. She got the disease back in just two days.

Of course I separated her and am treating her again, but I'm really worried about my puffy. Obviously my tank is dirty. I even lost a fish in there about 5-6 months ago that I never found. And I have algae growing in there (there is a brown and a BLACK kind that looks nasty). Why does my molly keep getting sick in there?! I'm going on a 5-6 day vacation tomorrow and am really worried about my puffer being dead when I come back. I gave the sick molly to my parents to take care of. They'll come by my place once to feed my fish, but they won't know if she's not ok.

And BTW! I did not know about this getting gas out of sand thing. I've never done that and am even more worried about that.

I guess I know what to do, I need to clean my tank and find the skeleton of the dead fish and get rid of the algae and bubbles and everything. I just wanted to whine a little since I'm so worried about my puffer. She's supposed to stay with me for another 15 years at least, I want her to die from old age, not sickness.


Thanks for listening, my friends think I'm crazy when I tell them I have nightmares of my puffer dying!

Dorna

Dorna,

First of all, welcome aboard. You've certainly come to the right place for advice that will help you provide the right environment for your F8.

Unfortunately, your tank has some rather serious issues that will require some tough decisions on your part. To begin with, scats and F8s require different SG levels as they mature for optimum health. F8s should be maintained at 1.005 to 1.008 while scats should be in full SW once they are mature. Even if the SG requirements were the same, scats can grow to a foot or more and require 50 gallons each.

As you've noted, use of sand for a substrate can create maintenance issues. None of the fish you listed burrow in the substrate so there is no compelling reason to use sand. I would recommend using aragonite or crushed coral instead.

Fin rot and the algae issues that you described are both indications of poor water quality. Do you have test kits and can you post full parameters of your tank? At a minimum, we will need to know the SG of your tank and answers to the list of questions in the stickie at the top of the hospital forum: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that you are not doing large, weekly partial water changes. If that is true, I recommend that you read RTR's excellent articles on Old Tank Syndrome (OTS Link) and water change math for tanks with OTS (OTS Water Change Math Link) before performing any major maintenance on the tank.