The Puffer Forum

I have had my congo for over a year and he has been eating frozen food for probably about 8 months.
I swaped out his tank about 4 weeks ago and he will not eat anything now he ate one Live ghost shrimp about a week ago but nothing else.
I am afraid he is going to starve since he was eating a large shrimp every 3 days and now nothing.
Any sugestions?

I would like to know more about the change in tanks from what to what.

Sometimes change and stress can cause a puffer not to eat but there are certainly other causes. Could you answer these questions?

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

its a 45 gallon Cube i used the water from his Old tank and added new all my reading are noraml range. Ammonia is reading 0 ppm and Nitrate is rading 5.0 but this is just a water sample held to the card i dont have digital meters
He is alone in the tank minus 1 guppy i put in to see if he would eat.
Nothing has been changed since the tank was set up. Its a sand substrate tank with live plants just like his pervious tank jsut larger.

Have you tried an earth worm?

No i havent he has never been willing to eat it before but ill try it

With Lurkers it is difficult to tell why they are not eating. Naturally the often go days without eating.

Have you seen any white poop? Or does he have a pinched in look? You might have an IP problem.

the earthworm is a good suggestion
you might also try offering a cricket, held by long forceps

Theres no poop at all i assume since he hasnt eaten when he was eating there was always some that i had to remove from the tank. and he dosent look sunk in at all.

He's probably adjusting to the new environment. They can go quite some time without eating.

I have mostly lurkers and ambush predator puffers and they do go on hunger strikes once in a while. I have noticed that they have a tendency to do so around this time of year than any other. Not sure why really, never been able to pin that down. I agree with Pufferpunk also, new surroundings and the time of year. What has worked for me in the past to get my Arrowhead to come off his hunger strikes is small live crabs and earthworms (preferably nightcrawlers, they're larger and much more active in water). Make sure you quarantine the crabs before you feed them to him.

One question, when you moved tanks, did you just take the water from one and move to the other or did you take the filter and decor with?