The Puffer Forum

Hi all,

Please pardon the complete state of panic, it's nearly 2am here and I'm exhausted and freaking out a bit and scared to go to bed.

I got my first ever fish tank this weekend and I'm facing possibly my first crisis a little bit earlier than anticipated.

In a nutshell:

Friday: Picked up a 25l tank from a local specialist dealer, fitted the filter, heater, a thermometer, dropped in the substrate, filled it with water, added dechlorinator fluid, added the bacteria for the filter and left it to warm up to the 25c I'd set the heater to at the shop's advice.

Saturday: Returned to the store, got some simple plants, landscaped (aquascaped?) the tank, added a bit of liquid carbon and fertiliser and left it once more.

Sunday/today: Returned a final time to pick up six little young dwarf puffers. Acclimated them patiently then let them in the tank at around 14:30. Had a fun hour or so watching them explore their new tank, work out their territories, just generally swim around being reasonably lively and seemingly normal to a lay person.

I'd read in a number of guides that it's advisable to leave the light off for a few hours while they settle in, so I did.

I then sat down on the sofa for the evening in a completely dark room watching the TV and lost track of time til about midnight. When I got up and put the light on in the living room I noticed to my horror that four of the fish were gulping at the surface, one was floating around sluggishly and the last was just laying on the substrate in on corner of the tank.

I freaked, started googling and realised I'd probably made a series of errors all at once that have compounded each other and created a really oxygen deprived tank.

I'd left the lights off entirely for nearly twelve hours, I'd taken the thermostat on the heater for granted and hadn't checked the actual thermometer (it's fairly warm today) and the heat had gone up to 29c and lastly the liquid carbon I hadn't had a pipette for I may have put a drop too much in.

I immediately turned the heater down, switched all the lights on, moved the outpipe on the filter right to the very surface to create as much movement on the surface as possible and cycled about 10% of the water straight out.

The temperature's down to about 27 and three of the fish are now swimming around a bit more regularly, albeit higher up the tank than they were this morning. One is making regular trips to the surface and two are still up here 90% of the time gulping.

Can I relax at this moment and just wait for the plants to do the rest slowly re-oxygenating the tank or do I need to take more urgent and drastic steps? I'm desperate to sleep but I'm terrified I'll wake up to a tank full of dead fish. I'm not really sure how urgent the situation is exactly?

To iterate, it's a completely brand new tank, other than anything I may have done that's stupid it should clean and fresh.

So sorry it's takgne an entire day for me to see this! Computer has been on the fritz & it seems I'm the only one answering questions here much. Your tank is barely large ehough for a single DP. You got some terrible info somewhere. What "bacteria" exactly did you add? Sounds like you added a lot of unnecessary chemicals, too. Prime is the oNLY chemical I ad as a dechlor & conditioner. How many are still alive?

Fish gulping at the surface can also be caused by ammonia and/or nitrite poisoning, besides the high temperature. Most of those instant cycle bacteria products aren't sufficient to cycle a tank. I've read good things about tetra SafeStart on this forum and Dr. Tim's elsewhere, but even then you should always keep a close eye on the parameters IMO

Because you where advised to put your fish into an aquarium that most likely isn't properly cycled a peak of either of the 2 is very likely. I would preform daily, big water changes (75-90%), the coming days, making sure that the temperature is similar to the water in the aquarium. Afterwards you could lower the percentage and frequency, but without an ammonia and nitrite test kit (and if possible a nitrate test) it's guesswork when that might be.

Frankly, the best solution might be to take the fish back to the store or someone with a bigger (cycled) tank. 25L is a perfect size aquarium for some dwarf shrimp or a beta but not 6 dwarf puffers. I would advise you to read up about the nitrogen cycle first though, before adding in any other animals.

Good day, Finnegan! It seems your tank has not been properly cycled. Also, too many puffers for the size tank you have. You may need to adjust. Worth investing in testing strips to check. I am in the process of cycling a 3 gal. for one DP and it took about a month to get parameters stable. Don't have the puffer yet as I am waiting for the bladder snail population to reach a certain level so DP has enough food.
Good luck!

3 gal?

In the corner with the cone of shame...

puff-n-bones wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 10:57 am Worth investing in testing strips to check.

Strip tests are pretty much worthless. The only tests worth using are drop ones, but expiry can be an issue here.
The best solution is taking a water sample to a good LFS and asking them to run a battery of tests.

This post is from August.