The Puffer Forum

Hi all,
It has been a while but my wife(Mermaid) and I are back in the puffer game! Sadly, I made a mistake in putting a toxic material in the tank with our abei puffer, Abe and he died from poisoning about 6 months ago. It was a tragic time for us and we have been hesitant to get another puffer. Through our experience, we have been able to help other hobbyists from making the same mistake.

Well, my early x-mas present was the purchase of a 3" Mbu and 6" Flagtail Procholidus complete with 65 set up and filters. It was a great deal from a fellow hobbyist. (Pufferpunk--you know all about this from MFK!). The seller has been busy with work and school and had to move so this sale was basically a rescue situation. He told me he hadn't changed the water in a month When I arrived to pick it up, the water had a cloudy white haze about it--i instanly knew it was green water since I have had that before with a planted tank some years back. I took 30 gallons of the tank water, kept the filters (XP3 and AC500) filled with tank water, and put the fish in a 20g cooler with battery operated air pump. I also left 1" of water in the tank to keep the gravel submerged. It was about a 5 hour ordeal since the guy lived about 90 minutes away.

The tank was set back up with half of the original water and half fresh water. The intial readings were Nitrate at 15ppm and Nitrite about 3ppm. I have been doing a 40% wc daily. The ammonia orginally registered at .2 ppm on day two but has gone back down to 0. Ph is around 7.2. I am going to retest before tonight's water change. This is a lot work to compensate for the previous owner's lack of upkeep. I have the single flouresent bulb on for 4 hr a day (for feeding time at night).

On day two both fish accepted shrimp and frozen bloodworms. The day after that they ate frozen clams, It seems that the Mbu is a nibbler--he kind of picks at his food for a long time--even if I put in small, bite-sized chunks! The Mbu doesn't get as plump as my abei did when it ate so I am wondering if it has IPs--I want to treat with prazipro but want to wait to fix the green water before treating. Also, havent seen the Mbu poop yet..

The tank has been set up for 5 days now and the white haze of green water is stil prevalant I have ordered a UV sterilizer but I doubt it will arrive for another week or two. I guess my question is if there is anything else I can do better the situation? Does anyone thing the Mbu has IP? Should I treat or wait?

BTW: this set up--the original owner's sole tank--is a quarantine set up for me. I will be moving both fish to 125g in a couple weeks then my 375 about 6 months later. The 1000g will happen, but not overnight! I will post pics as soon as I can.

Thanks pufferforum friends and it's nice to be back!

Knobhill & Mermaid

Bacterial haze (gray water) or green water (unicellular algae) are both balance symptoms. The tank got "off" - obviously from the lack of upkeep - and the tank dropped back into NTS (new tank syndrome on the Web, but in reality is immature tank syndrome).

Both or either condition is just an imbalance in the micuflora/microfauna. Extra waters changes may help, or may equally prolong the condition. That is unpredictable.

Personally I would omit the extra changes unless you want to get rid of all the old water - not a bad idea on this tank IMHO. But I would use other means to fight the situation, such as diatom filtration to avoid it getting too dense of collapsing and robbing the filters and fish of oxygen. Do you own or have access to any diatom filter? Running that to reduce the load gets excess bugs out of the tank - but even that can prolong the situation and is to me safer than ignoring it. If not available, I'd pick up a few Ouick-filters from the LFS and use those to the same end, or add additional mechanical filtration of any sort, the finer the better. But you must get the filter pads floss or whatever out of the tank much more often to export the extra "food" out of the water. You cannot leave the mechanical filters in long enough to allow any degradation of water quality from decaying algae or microbes in the mech media - rinse or replace frequently - daily or ever other day at the outside. That is my handling of those situations. Once any tank matures, it rarely recurs other than in cases of prolonged neglect.

HTH

i thought the #1 thing right now is to get the nitrite out of there with WC?

Also I would start adding a good bacterial supplement to help build the bio-filter up. PetSmart's TopFin "Bacterial supplement" is one of the best that I have ever used. Also adding some Seachem Prime that helps detoxifies the nitrites and Zeolite to help lower the ammonia. Just wanted to add that in there. It helped save alot of fish for mine and others I know .

Most bacterial supplements do not work at all, regardless of what the ads and the LFS say. Others here can comment on what is currently available and and really works. I do know that Dr. Tim's works, but it is not commonly locally available.

I assumed that there was no longer a nitrite issue, due to the partials already done. Update us with most recent pre- and post-partial readings for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. If ammonia is not present and nitrite is, add one teaspoon sodium chloride, NaCl, per 5 gallons to block nitrite toxicity. Replace with each water change for the new water only until nitrite no longer is detectable. Nitrite toxicity is easy to block.

I have done 3 partials this week. I haven't done a wc for the last 2 days as conditions have stabilized. Readings last night were: nitrate 20ppm, nitrite 0ppm, ammonia 0ppm. However, water is still cloudy. Mbu is active and eating shrimp and clams; also have some live ramhorn snails on the way (100 for $20 on ebay!). I don't want to use any artificial bacteria products, I do add prime to the water. I was going to add zeolite to the tank but didn't since the ammonia returned to zero after day 2. I don't have access to a diatom filter. I'm waiting on the UV--it is actually for my 375g but I was gonna give it a try on this tank.

Will probably do a couple more partials or a 50% wc over the weekend--which do you think would be better? Thanks

Most zeolytes are non-functional if there is non-trivial sodium chloride in the water. Don't use such if you are adding salt for any reason. Prime itself buys you time.

The effect of UV may help or may hinder the tank maturing into balance. The tank microbes have to come into balance with one another. If the haze (whether algal or bacterial) become dense, physical removal is in order - and removal by mechanical capture and physical removal is always preferable to killing (killing re-releases nutrient into the water column to continue the haze or promote others) while physical removal gets those nutrients sequesterered in the haze out of the system. For the same reasons, capture and removal does not add as many potential nutrients as do water changes. If the haze is dense, physical removal by partials is worthwhile to avoid a potential O2 crash. But short of that, I would recommend riding it out. Our interventions may only prolong the time until the tank comes into balance among the microscopic inhabitants. So long as we add agents or devices such as UV, we just may block the balance we want. So long as the haze is not dense or threatening, the less intervention we do, the sooner the tank will mature.

HTH

I have been doing 0% water changes every other day since the last post. The water still hasn't cleared--it did get a little bit better. Water parameters are stable at 20ppm nitrate, 0 nitrite and ammonia, ph at 7.2.

Last night the UV arrived! I hooked it up to the return from my canister filter. Within a couple hours it was clearer. This morning,the water was CRYSTAL CLEAR!

The Mbu has been eating market shrimp everyday until he is full! Then he lays on the bottom to digest. I have 100 ramshorn snails coming in the post. How many should I put in at one time?

knobhill wrote:I have been doing 0% water changes every other day since the last post. The water still hasn't cleared--it did get a little bit better. Water parameters are stable at 20ppm nitrate, 0 nitrite and ammonia, ph at 7.2.

Last night the UV arrived! I hooked it up to the return from my canister filter. Within a couple hours it was clearer. This morning,the water was CRYSTAL CLEAR!

The Mbu has been eating market shrimp everyday until he is full! Then he lays on the bottom to digest. I have 100 ramshorn snails coming in the post. How many should I put in at one time?

Congrats on your water clearing up. UV sterilizer's do a really awesome job clearing up cloudy water of any sort, imo. I had a guy askin me how to clear his tank water that he tryed everything and I told him to try a UV sterilizer. Now he has crystal clear water too .