The Puffer Forum

I posted last night for the first time here, and also made a donation to the site.

While our poor little guy was sitting there sick we had to wait for the post to get approved by a mod. After a couple hours of worry the post was approved and we added pictures to help show symptoms. This morning anxious for more info we checked and our post has completely disappeared =(.

In the meantime the puffer is now a lot more sick. Before it was just so splotchy spots on his tummy, but now he is suddenly laying still mostly, breathing rapidly, mouth part way open, and not interested in food. He also now looks skinny for the first time since we got him about five weeks ago, despite him having eaten normally last night and having a full belly.

We love this little guy, please help!

info:

We have seven tanks but we are new to brackish and puffers, when we bought this guy we were told he could go in with our semi-aggressives but when we researched him we immediately set him up with his own tank and started adding aquarium salt slowly. It was a new tank and new filter but we started with cycled water from two other healthy cycled tanks.

He has his own 20 gallon long tank with lots of caves and fake plants. Substrate is aquarium sand.

His diet has been nightcrawlers, live snails, defrosted frozen shrimp, and red wrigglers.

His nitrates were up around 20 at one point, but we've been doing daily water changes keeping it down, right now it's nearly zero. Water changes are our local well tapwater treated with Prime.

I'm concerned now about salt, looking last night I saw here to use Marine salt instead of aquarium salt, but we don't know why or what the difference is. We've been using aquarium salt and SG is currently 0.008. We just moved him into a 50/50 mix of his water and good clean water from another healthy tank to reduce his salt in case the aquarium salt is bad or we tapered it up too quickly. He is now a little more active but still not eating.

Current water quality according to Tetra 5-in-1 EasyStrips:
Nitrate- about 5 ppm
Nitrite- about 0 ppm
hardness- about 75 ppm
alkalinity- about 80 ppm
PH- about 7

Sorry you're having so much trouble with your posts here. We just have so many spammers...

Any ammonia? Starting a tank by just using water from another tank will not cycle it at, I'm afraid. It must have media/substrate from an established tank, as the biological bacteria is found on surfaces, not in the water column.
http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... encycycle/

Not that I really think this is the problem, here's an article on salt: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... ftheearth/

What substrate are you using?
More reading: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... ocus/fig8/

Pufferpunk wrote:Sorry you're having so much trouble with your posts here. We just have so many spammers...

Any ammonia? Starting a tank by just using water from another tank will not cycle it at, I'm afraid. It must have media/substrate from an established tank, as the biological bacteria is found on surfaces, not in the water column.
http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... encycycle/

Not that I really think this is the problem, here's an article on salt: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... ftheearth/

What substrate are you using?
More reading: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... ocus/fig8/

I have black argonite sand.

VairGirl wrote:I posted last night for the first time here, and also made a donation to the site.

While our poor little guy was sitting there sick we had to wait for the post to get approved by a mod. After a couple hours of worry the post was approved and we added pictures to help show symptoms. This morning anxious for more info we checked and our post has completely disappeared =(.

In the meantime the puffer is now a lot more sick. Before it was just so splotchy spots on his tummy, but now he is suddenly laying still mostly, breathing rapidly, mouth part way open, and not interested in food. He also now looks skinny for the first time since we got him about five weeks ago, despite him having eaten normally last night and having a full belly.

We love this little guy, please help!

info:

We have seven tanks but we are new to brackish and puffers, when we bought this guy we were told he could go in with our semi-aggressives but when we researched him we immediately set him up with his own tank and started adding aquarium salt slowly. It was a new tank and new filter but we started with cycled water from two other healthy cycled tanks.

He has his own 20 gallon long tank with lots of caves and fake plants. Substrate is aquarium sand.

His diet has been nightcrawlers, live snails, defrosted frozen shrimp, and red wrigglers.

His nitrates were up around 20 at one point, but we've been doing daily water changes keeping it down, right now it's nearly zero. Water changes are our local well tapwater treated with Prime.

I'm concerned now about salt, looking last night I saw here to use Marine salt instead of aquarium salt, but we don't know why or what the difference is. We've been using aquarium salt and SG is currently 0.008. We just moved him into a 50/50 mix of his water and good clean water from another healthy tank to reduce his salt in case the aquarium salt is bad or we tapered it up too quickly. He is now a little more active but still not eating.

Current water quality according to Tetra 5-in-1 EasyStrips:
Nitrate- about 5 ppm
Nitrite- about 0 ppm
hardness- about 75 ppm
alkalinity- about 80 ppm
PH- about 7

the best thing you can do now (immediately) is get a liquid test kit
the test strips are not accurate
if the chemistry is bad, nothing but fixing that will help
you can start water changes right away, but save a sample of the tank water for testing
sounds to me like you have a water quality problem (which can lead to other troubles)

It's too late...poor little Lumpy passed late last night.

VairGirl wrote:I posted last night for the first time here, and also made a donation to the site.

While our poor little guy was sitting there sick we had to wait for the post to get approved by a mod. After a couple hours of worry the post was approved and we added pictures to help show symptoms. This morning anxious for more info we checked and our post has completely disappeared =(.

In the meantime the puffer is now a lot more sick. Before it was just so splotchy spots on his tummy, but now he is suddenly laying still mostly, breathing rapidly, mouth part way open, and not interested in food. He also now looks skinny for the first time since we got him about five weeks ago, despite him having eaten normally last night and having a full belly.

We love this little guy, please help!

info:

We have seven tanks but we are new to brackish and puffers, when we bought this guy we were told he could go in with our semi-aggressives but when we researched him we immediately set him up with his own tank and started adding aquarium salt slowly. It was a new tank and new filter but we started with cycled water from two other healthy cycled tanks.

He has his own 20 gallon long tank with lots of caves and fake plants. Substrate is aquarium sand.

His diet has been nightcrawlers, live snails, defrosted frozen shrimp, and red wrigglers.

His nitrates were up around 20 at one point, but we've been doing daily water changes keeping it down, right now it's nearly zero. Water changes are our local well tapwater treated with Prime.

I'm concerned now about salt, looking last night I saw here to use Marine salt instead of aquarium salt, but we don't know why or what the difference is. We've been using aquarium salt and SG is currently 0.008. We just moved him into a 50/50 mix of his water and good clean water from another healthy tank to reduce his salt in case the aquarium salt is bad or we tapered it up too quickly. He is now a little more active but still not eating.

Current water quality according to Tetra 5-in-1 EasyStrips:
Nitrate- about 5 ppm
Nitrite- about 0 ppm
hardness- about 75 ppm
alkalinity- about 80 ppm
PH- about 7

I think that there actually could be a problem with the salt content in your tank, aquarium salt and marine salt will have different densities so your refractometer/hydrometer could be showing false readings, you could have put loads of sodium chloride in your tank but your hydrometer could be showing a low SG.

I'd be very tempted to slowly (over about an hour) acclimatise your puffer back to one of your freshwater tanks, then remove as much water as you possibly can from your puffer tank. Then you can take half of the filter media from one of your established tanks and add it to the filter of the puffer tank and fill the puffer tank up with fresh water, once topped up you can pop the puffer back in. The established filter media should instantly cycle the puffer tank but keep a close eye on water parameters for the first week or so to make sure. You can start to think about upping the salinity at your first water change in about 3-7 days. Keep salinity changes to less than SG0.002 per week and you should do fine.

The puffer died.

I'm sure that I posted my reply before yours showed up but for some reason it didn't make it onto the board until later so apologies if it appeared a bit heartless.

I'm sorry to hear that it didn't end well for you and your puff