The Puffer Forum

I've had toad for a month he has been well eating once a day all going well,i decided to increase his filtration as his very messy, brought a fluval205 installed it but the next day toad was breathing rapidly not his normal self, i gave him and cockle which he ate but not all of it, after that he appeared to go very very dark in color and is sitting on the bottom of the tank now breathing deeply as if finding it hard to breath.

stats:
toad mbu puffer
ph 8.0
nitrite less than 0.3mg/l
ammon 0

NITRATE above normal
cycled tank over 2 years
water change every week

2 conclusions I've come to: high nitrate increase gill mucous = hard to breath so did 50 % water change and installed nitrate removing pad

new filter churned up the sand as return was quite strong releasing anaerobic bacteria gases although i hoovered after every meal (didn't know about these bacteria untill i looked at a few posts) so 50%water change,

now been like it for 2 days am i missing something HELP not had him long don't want to lose him especially after having my dog PTS on saturday.

did you replace the old filter with this new filter?

becasue there is nitrIte in the tank, it sounds like its re-cycling.

your best bet would be to either get some bio-spira in there ASAP, or do lots of water changes. (i would do 25-50% daily to ride it out until its cycled.)


how big is the tank?

thanks for responding john but the fluval is purely a supplement filter and the old one is still in the tank. doing small daily water changes at the mo.

the tank is 30inch, before anyone says its to small for a mbu a larger one is in the pipeline i got the 2nd ext fluval so that i could build up bacteria and then transfer this external one to the new tank so there is mature filtration whilst the ext rena filter that comes with the new tank gets established.

will check out biospira i did add filter start if that is the same

You wont find any Bio-Spira in the UK spud, we cant get it over here and filter start is pretty much useless in cycling a tank.

If you cycled the tank over 2 years, i'm assuming you had fish in it for that period of time. Was the tank without fish for any period of time before you put your mbu in as the bacteria could have died off which is why it may be struggling at the moment.

Your high nitrate readings could be that the tap water is high in nitrates which we can get in the UK. Have you used a test kit on the tap water to see if it is high before it goes in the tank. If it is big more frequent water changes should keep it under control.

Just out of interest what tap water conditioner are you using?

the sponges in the filter were actually taken from another tank with fish in which had been running for over 2 years but the actual water in toads tank was new but treated with nutafin aquaplus

just looked into bio-spira and as you say can only get it if you live in America so many things i want to get u cant get in the uk.

did test my water supply but test was negative test kit for nitrate is a bit old so am not sure if this is correct will get a new one(previous test on toads water which was high nitrate was done at a local fish shop.

toad at the moment is moving slightly almost swimming! hope this is a good sign, still breathing deeply,still really dark in colour, keeping everything crossed. not gonner put a smiley on too quick.

Instead of small dailys, I'd increase that to larger ones. There's actually an article on that in our Library.

just tested my water supply nitrate level is at least 20mg/l if that means anything to any one 4th colour up from 0mg/l. sera test kit

today toad has returned to his normal colour and is swimming around but his still not right. nitrates in his tank is 40mg/ml well high but if the water im adding contains high nitrate levels i guess it would be.

NitrAtes are not as harmful as nitrItes. You might want to test for them aswell as ammonia!

nitrite level is less than 0.3 yellow on test chart the lowest colour it reads.

i think for toad it was the new filter stirring up the sand/increased flow may be too much, a sudden large water change when new filter pumped it all over living room floor tipped him over the edge.

but thank god he appears to be coming back from the dead on tuesday he was lying on his side nearly black in colour now on saturday he is pale black and yellow and swimming around, still not quite his normal self but 100 times better.

well pleased wont be changing anything in his tank for a while.

Glad he seems to getting over the worst. Just keep an eye on the water quality and hopefully he will be fine.

They can get moody when new stuff is put in the tank or re-arranged not to their liking. Keep regularly stirring that sand as well, its a PITA but unfortunately necessary.

When you get his bigger tank you might wanna go with some nice gravel it will save you a shed load of stirring time and a load of aggrevation. Stirring up a small tank p*sses me off a bigger tank would drive me over the edge.