The Puffer Forum

okay guys, if you don't know what's been going on lately with my tank you can read my old posts to see what's up. if you don't feel like reading them, basically i've had a bad nitrite problem for some time now. i've been doing 50% water changes almost every day for the past 2 weeks to try and get the levels down. well about 3 days ago i finally got the levels down to zero. figuring i could put a hault on water changes for a few days i stopped doing them. today i tested and the nitrites are back up to toxic levels. i'm gunna go crazy!!! i don't have the time or money (for salt) to do water changes every day of my puffer's life. i treat with seachem prime every time i do a water change but my nitrites are still high. idk what to do...someone PLEASE help me. thank you.

What size tank? What kind of puffer? What is the sg?

When this happened to me, I finally removed ALL the decor completely out of the water & found a rotting corpse of a fish, inside a hollow ornament.

sevenyearnight it's a 20 gallon tank with a small GSP with a SG of around 1.014

and pufferpunk, it can't be a fish corpse because he's the only fish that's been in the tank and i shook out all of my ornaments last time i did a water change thinking maybe some food or something got stuck in them and there was nothing. i didn't take them completely out of the tank, just dislodged them from the sand and shook them a lot....but nothing. there aren't many places stuff could get stuck in them either.

I was doing the same--the dead fish didn't fall out until I took the ornament totally out of the water. Could be a chunk of food for you. Take everything out & smell inside. The smell inside that ornament was overwhelming!

Uh, I think I remember reading that a certain SG is very difficult to maintain biological filtration.
Is it an option for you to pick up some live rock and go full marine? I know it's normally recommended that you only raise it by .002 a week, but I had an issue with my nitrites in the mid brackish range. So after that seemed to go on forever, I got some live rock, put my puffer in a large plastic container, I raised the main tank up to 1.020, added the live rock, (which was already cured and from a safe source) and then drip acclimated my puffer over a few hours. Took about 3 - 4 days and the nitrites finally were at 0, and remained that way. I do small weekly water changes, constant 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, my nitrates are always under 5 ppm.
It was really nice to not have to keep buying salt and prime every week!

I think I remember reading that a certain SG is very difficult to maintain biological filtration

I do not believe this to be true at all.

is there any way i can bring the S.G. DOWN rather than up? it's only a 20 gallon tank and i don't know much at all about full marine conditions. i know that the smaller the tank is the harder it is to maintain and the levels can get outa whack real easily. don't you need a bunch of special filters and stuff too once you get up to full marine? i'm obviously very inexperienced when it comes to marine conditions. i only know fresh and brackish (which are pretty similar)

No but you can go higher, which GSPs will prefer. What SG are you at now & how long have you been there?
Have you done as I suggested?

i've been between 1.014 and 1.016 for about 2 and a half months now. when i do water changes i usually add water that has a SG of 1.015 but obviously some of the water evaporates over time which brings it up to around 1.016 or sometimes if i'm low and i wanna save salt i only use water that has a SG of 1.014 but it's never gone lower than 1.014 or higher than 1.016

I thought I remember RTR saying something about a certain SG level being more sensitive/difficult because of the transition of freshwater bacteria to saltwater, or something to that effect.
I may be remembering this incorrectly, but I believe he brought it up when talking about the test kits for brackish levels not being existent, because of the lack of market, and that it was somewhat difficult to determine the proper color result on the API kits for brackish water.

If it's any consolation, I find my marine tanks to be way less maintenance than my planted tanks, and exponentially easier than I imagined them to be.

Yes, I think you are understanding that incorrectly. It is difficult to test at those SGs because there is both FW & BW bacteria at work.

once you go full marine you actually save money on salt, due to the live rock being such a great filter itself. You can cut back the amount of water changes

All you need is sand, live rock & powerheads. A protein skimmer is another great addition.