The Puffer Forum

I just got a porcupine puffer today, about 4 hours ago. When I first put him in, he swam around for about 16 minutes or so and seemed to be ok. Then he went behind a rock and laid down on the sand and has barely moved. He almost looks like he's gasping for air.
Tank specifics are this:
Nitrite 5
Nitrate 80
pH 8.2
Ammonia 0.25
Specific gravity 1.022

The tank is a 220 gallon with the following inhabitants:
5 Turbo snails
3 hermit crabs
1 emerald crab
10 or so tiny snails and crabs (don't know what kind)
1 yellow clown goby
2 domino damsels
2 green chromis
2 blue damsels (these were sold as "assorted damsels")

I feed a mix of Omega One flakes and Shrimp pellets in the morning and frozen mysis shrimp and frozen emerald treats in the evening.
The tank has only been up for about 10 weeks and I haven't done any water changes yet.
I've not added any products
For the first four weeks, my husband worked with the tank and added liquid ammonia and shrimp to cycle the tank.
After the spike, we added about half of the clean up crew and the 4 damsels and 2 chromis.
We haven't lost any fish.
Two weeks ago we added the yellow clown goby and the other half of the clean up crew.

Hopefully that's most of the information you need.

Hi and welcome. Your tank readings tell me your tank is not cycled, you should not be showing any ammonia or nitrite and nitrates should be kept below 20 to keep healthy puffers. How long has the tank been set up? I would advise doing a large water change or two to get those numbers down

Just spotted its been up for ten weeks, how does your source water test? Do you have live rock?

We have about 40 pounds of live Fiji rock and 40 pounds of dead rock.
I'm assuming by source water you mean what I add to the tank?
It's water that I bought from the pet store and didn't test it.

Your problem may be the fact you haven't done a water change for 10 weeks! Even a well set up FOWLR needs 30-50% water change per month, leaving you about 2-3 water changes behind. I'd do a 50% WC asap.

The LFS that has helped us set up the tank from the beginning said no water changes until at least 12 weeks because it will mess up with building the healthy bacteria. But this poor puffer looks so sad, I guess it's worth a shot.

One word of advice, only trust the word of your LFS if you can back it up reliably online or from experts... Google is your best friend! The internet is full of people with similar experiences/questions. As for that advice, it has some merit but also 12 week is a little excessive. As soon as your tank is cycled and established you can start performing water changes, the nitrifying bacteria are present in your cured live rock, and attached to surfaces, and aren't present in the water column. What does this mean? It means as long as water changes are consistent in volume and water specifications (S.G., temp, etc.) then your bacteria will not die off enough to ruin your bacteria colony.
Also remember, puffers are scaleless and have sensitive gills, which means they are less tolerable of conditions that may otherwise not overly affect other scaled fish. Some fish may survive in conditions in which a puffers health would be compromised.

Yes do a large wc fast. Get rid of that water.

Find a store that carries this and add it to your tank, consider it an emergency since you already have inhabitants.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003ODDS5 ... 1_1&sr=8-1

If her tank is suffering from the LR still curing, this product won't help. 40lbs of cured LR, should support the bioload in there.