The Puffer Forum

Hey all,

I was walking thougha pet store the other day looking to see what fish they had. I had setup a new 75gal for my friends 4line pictus and its been alone in there for a couple months (my friend is taking the fish back after the move maybe another month).

Anyways I saw two pitiful looking beat to walrus GSPs in a chichlid tank o.0 they both were in opposite corners hiding as close to the corner as they could fins had been shreaded. I called the person over and kinda dug into them a bit, they said the office only lets them put agressive fish with other aggressive fish yada yada. I bought both GSPs and told them that I was literaly buying them to rescue them from being killed by them and that they should be ashamed. (This was a Daves If you want to email them and give them crap too: https://www.davessodaandpetcity.com)

Anyways I brought them home and put them in the 75gal. Currently it is setup as fresh but I am going to slowly move it up to brackish and then transition the whole thing to full marine (once my friend takes his catfish back). Anyways they are eating but they have more of a brown color with the only green really being on the back, their fins also have some signs of deterioration (rot) where they were bit. I havent ever tried to medicate a puffer so I wanted to touch base and see what peoples thoughts were.

As for tank specifics this is my 3rd 75gal, im not new I have a full reef and a planted tank.

I use rodi
This tabk has a Fluval 406 currently, runs carbon/ferrous atm with seachem matrix for bio.
The light is garbage and will be replaced as I move up to marine
Substrate is blackdiamond coalslaq
Got some dragon rock in there
Ph7.2
0 ammonia
0 nitrite
0 nitrate
0 phos
8 dkh

I feeding mysis shrimp atm, the pictus eats shrimp pellets but he gobbles them before puffers even notice and I just squirt the mysis right too the puffers. I will vary the food later when the pictus is gone with live food, i have krill frozen too to mix in.

My question is how should I approach healing these little guys? They were brown when I rescued them for $10 a piece :/
At least now they swim lol, but I want to give them the best chance possible.

In b4 tank setup as i move past 1.010 i will install a protein skimmer and dual chamber reactor with liferock pumps wavemaker and marine quality light. As I get to 1.016+ the 406 will come off and just have the fowlr, skimmer, reactor

Sad in store

Now in new home: I added some dry rock to help bring ph up a bit since i posted

Great rescue! Have you done BW before? A protein skimmer won't work much <1.018 & live rock will die off below that, too.

Try Melafix & clean water, that should heal them pretty quickly.

Okay i didnt know if melafix was safe for them and wanted to check. My plan was to bring them up to full marine so sit in the 1.010 range for a month after going up .002 a week. Then start going up to full marine after that. I dont want to keep them as brackish, my understanding is full marine is fine for gsp is that not the case?

Once the pictus goes home i was going to switch the black coalslaq to crushed aragonite little by little

If you already have cured live rock available, it wouldn't hurt them to get them in SW now: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15647

I do but i need to wait until my friend picks up his pictus my reef tank is established and i have extra live rock in the sump that i can move out but i cant put them in the reef lol they would goto town on my inhabitants lol.

My plan is to keep this tank just for them and move them up. How fast do you think i can go up in salinity since I have live rock i can put in once it hits 1.020?

You might find it easier then, to set up a marine tank & drip them to that SG in a day.

Is there a reason in your mind not to just slowly raise the salinity in this tank and add liverockwhen it hits 1.018?

LOL, save my brain on calculations????
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