The Puffer Forum

I know ive been cycling my tank, but ive been told this morning the puffers have to leave the community tank within a few days, parents have said they can go in my tank and I can do what ever it takes to let them live, ie massive daily water changes etc OR they can be euthenaised, now I dont like the idea of euthenising them, ive grown attatched to these little guys.

Ive read the emergency cycling article, I cant find prime in my area but ive found a product called AmQuel Plus, the company website says it detoxifies chlorines including those chlorines in chloramines, detoxifies all of the kinds of toxic nitrogen compounds in the water, detoxifies all forms of ammonia/ammonium/nitrites/nitrates from the water, including ammonia in chloramines. AND does not interfere with the beneficial nitrifying bacteria or their food sources. So im going to get a bottle and give it a go, if it doesnt do as stated I'll have to order some prime online.

Is there anything someone else can reccomend, to do as well that isnt in the emergency cycling article?

Are you able to get some media from a disease free, established tank?

Possibly, though the tank it would come froms only been established for about 3months so probably not alot of media from it, im going to the store in a minute, I'm going to have a look for some tetra safestart in there while im there

Please don't waste your money on Amquel. They have changed the original formula (which was good) into multiple different formulations for varied water conditions and IME the current materials carry non-trivial risks. Prime is both far cheaper and several times safer.

Too late, but i'll keep it and dad can use it as a water conditioner for the comunity tank when that runs out, i'll order some prime online

Well since I got the amquel, I was being pestered to make the move, so the move has happened, reginald and stanley look good in they're new home, exploring around, though they seemed to stick together for the first 20min like they did when they first went in the community tank, But since then ive been watching them explore and hunt baby snails in the tank, I figure that much be a good sign. So now I have a few weeks of big water changes to look forward to, but despite the extra work im happy.

Good luck...

I'm sure you know the drill - loads of water changes if you can get at ammonia and nitrite test kits and the results prove interesting.

Again, good luck!

Ok ive been doing daily water changes for a few days and today, just over 24 hours after the last change i thought i'd test my water to see whats going on,

ammonia - between 0 - 0.25 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
nitrate - between 5 - 10 ppm

The ammo and nitrates are a tad high but given these results it shouldnt be long til I can stop the daily changes right?

Your nitrates want to be below 20, so you're under that number and that's good.
Get a bottle of purified water and run the ammonia test on it, I had to do that because it looked like yellow (0), but I wanted to be sure that my water was indeed ammonia free. This way you have something you know doesn't have ammonia to compare the color to.
Considering that you are showing 0 nitrites, and showing some nitrates, then the bacteria breaking down the ammonia should be present.
Hopefully someone else more knowledgeable will be able to advise you here soon.
But great job so far with the daily water changes!

You'll have to keep doing them, until the Am/Ni remains 0 on their own.

Im thinking once I can get it to 0 am/ni daily then start every other day working towards weekly 50% changes rather than the dailies im on now

Yep, that's what we suggest here.

I do quick cycles with seachem stability, although it claims you can use it with fish in an uncycled tank it may not be the best idea to do so. In the down stairs tank, i cycled a 10g medium- heavy medium stocked (5-tetras, 3-corys, 3-plattys) in 1 week with the seachem stuff, and was reading nitrates at about 5 ppm at the end of the 7 days and from then on out it has fluxuated to 10-15-5 depending on how often i was doing the water changes.