The Puffer Forum

I had a GSP that started to get some black around his mouth and then started acting funny. A few days later his whole stomach tuned black and he died. Anyone have any ideas what happened? I changed the water every week. Kept the Sg at 1.012. Fed him every day.

What were the rest of your water parameters?

How did your puffer act funny? Was it flicking against objects in the tank? Not eating?
When puffers darken in colour it is usualy in response to stress.
Or sometimes when they sleep.
How much tank water did you change a week and how did you clean the filter medium (sponge).

Also, what were you feeding him? Did he look chubby or fat or was his stomach skinny?

I had him in a 10 gallon tank with two figure eight puffers. Was just going to leave them in there untill I got a bigger tank. I bought the Gsp first and then about a week later the two figure eights. As soon as the figure eights were in the tank the Gsp hid all the time instead of being very active like he use to be. I do about a 25% water change about every four to five days. Change nyy filter cartridge every other week. Have kept the tank at a stable 80 degrees. Sg 1.012. Not sure the nitrite or naitrate or ammonia levels but they have to be low as often as I am doing water changes. I use both Amquel products as dechol. Instant ocean for salt. Theres nothing lese living in the tank other then two olive nerite snails that were suppose to be food that none of them wanted. The Gsp use to hide and lay on the aragonite sand alot which I thought was weird. From the aragonite my ph is a stable 8.0. Have not been able to get themm to eat snails so I have been feeding them frozen crill and earth worms from a bait shop.

Miller535 wrote:I had him in a 10 gallon tank with two figure eight puffers. Was just going to leave them in there untill I got a bigger tank. I bought the Gsp first and then about a week later the two figure eights. As soon as the figure eights were in the tank the Gsp hid all the time instead of being very active like he use to be. I do about a 25% water change about every four to five days. Change nyy filter cartridge every other week. Have kept the tank at a stable 80 degrees. Sg 1.012. Not sure the nitrite or naitrate or ammonia levels but they have to be low as often as I am doing water changes. I use both Amquel products as dechol. Instant ocean for salt. Theres nothing lese living in the tank other then two olive nerite snails that were suppose to be food that none of them wanted. The Gsp use to hide and lay on the aragonite sand alot which I thought was weird. From the aragonite my ph is a stable 8.0. Have not been able to get themm to eat snails so I have been feeding them frozen crill and earth worms from a bait shop.

The nitrates were probably high. Three puffers in a tank that is 1/3 the size a GSP requires would have had a big nitrate build with water changes of 25% every 4-5 days. These guys are huge waste producers. Also on a tank that size if you were running a standard filter for a 10 gallon it was probably not enough to keep your water parameters where they needed to be, not enough surface area or water turnover. How was the tank cycled prior to the F8's? One last thing is that with the 3 fish in that small of a tank the GSP was probably getting really stressed from crowding on top of the water conditions.

I have a penguin 200 on the tank. So thats pumping 200gph and am using a nitra zorb pouch. But they are deffinetly messy and waste producers. They leave alot of waiste from eating every day. They like what they like and they leave the rest.

I wasn't trying to be snarky with that last post (sorry, I just re-read it and thought it sounded that way...I can take a little getting used to ) I was trying to throw out some suggestions. You have great water turnover and the filter surface area is pretty good. The Nitrazorb works but only to a point, they have a fairly rapid saturation rate but in that crowded of a tank it can help a bit. I think the major factors that leaves then is crowding (territorial stress), a possible mini cycle of the filter and the puffer didn't like the water conditions that caused, and some other disease process. GSP's are all wild caught and IP's come as a standard feature on most models, they can kill the fish when they get in a stressed condition....one last thought for now is with the mildly elevated temp and the stocking amount there may have been some oxygen delpetion (oxygen doesn't dissolve as readily in elevated temps) and the GSP may have been the one that suffered the effects. Or we could get real wild and call it a combination of all of the above .

How did you cycle the tank? I have never used a penguin filter but is there a bio sponge that stays in the filter when you change out the cartridge? If not then your dumping your bacteria everytime you change your filter. I would highly suggest you get a liquid test kit i use API and it works great and easy to use.

The penguin filters use a bio wheel on them that stays all the time

Regardless how overfiltered this tank is, its still absurdly small for three puffers. Even juveniles and is still too small for two F8's. Some fish dont take well to a new environment and become severely stressed. His turning black was an obvious sign of stress. Throw two F8's in the mix, no test equipment for water parameters and an undersized tank and you've got a recipe for death.