The Puffer Forum

1. ammonia:0 nitrite:0 nitrate:20ppm salinity:1.005
2. 45 gallon, 3 GSPs (they are only about 1.5 inches long, I will house them in a larger tank when they get larger). Lots of rock formations.
3. Been feeding dried river shrimp twice a day (one shrimp per GSP). I have two aquatech 10-30 gallon filters and a tetra 30-60 gallon heater. 20% water changes every 3 or 4 days.
4. The only changes I've made since I got the puffers was take out all plants so that the salt wouldn't kill them (I've had it happen before). And I added the salt several days before I put the puffers in.
5. The aquarium has been set up for 3+ years.


So I bought three GSP puffers from wal mart (yeah yeah, I know) and two of them are doing absolutely fine now (for a couple of days they would occasionally pace the glass but now they don't do that), but the largest one (almost two inches) is displaying some really peculiar behavior. I'll look at him and he'll be on the bottom, breathing heavily, and his stomach will be dark, almost black. Then, about five minutes later, I'll see him swimming around and his stomach is perfectly white. And while he's swimming around he's breathing normally, and looks 100% fine. Then I'll come back later and he'll be on the bottom again. And he seems very shy from the other two fish. What the heck is going on?

can you give us a full tank shot? I'm thinking structure, lighting and shelter...

I think you're onto something there, about the shelter... I have one big archway built out of the rocks, but no real hiding places. I am going to redo the rocks and make three separate caverns for all three of them to hide in. Because I've noticed the GSP in question keeps trying to hide and get under things but he doesn't have an adequate hiding spot. I will also take a picture after I get done rearranging and tell me what you think.

The tank right now looks just like this except without the plants.

Break up the lines of sight with tall plants.

I just figured out what was wrong. I took the water parameter reading before I put the salt in. (I'm a dumbass). Just took another water reading and the ammonia was 0 but the nitrite was 2ppm. Yikes! So I did a 50% waterchange and now the nitrite is down to 1 ppm. Gonna do another tomorrow, and I already transferred the filter media from my other established 55 gallon to the puffer filters, so hopefully that will help bring down the levels. *sigh*.

Oops! Yeah it's normally suggested to raise the salinity by no more than .02 a week as the sudden change can kill of the bacteria. They will regroup though, but lots of water changes until then, and get some Prime if you don't already have it to help protect your little buddies through this mini cycle.

Do they sell that at petco? I also have another mom and pop fish store here in town but if they don't have it at either of those places then I'll probably have to get it online.

It should be easy to find.