The Puffer Forum

I bought a fresh water puffer a few months back from a LFS. Come to find out he was in brackish water at the store. At 1.009. What are the effects of such a change in salinity.

What kind of fish is it?

For the fish, it's probably a bit of a shock, but not fatal. The fish are far more adjustable to rapid changes than the filter bacteria.

Fahaka. The tank i put him in was fully cycled with Bio spira

The good news is the fahaka is a pure freshwater fish. The pet store was doing him an injustice keeping him in brackish.
While the truth is we don't know for sure what keeping fish in the wrong salinity does, the end result is a shortening of their life span.
My guess is he probably wasn't at the pet store long enough to do him serious damage, and since he survived the shock in switching to fresh water already, he should be fine.

If this was a few months ago & he seems fine, then I think no long-term damage was done. Did you straighten them out about the ouffer being FW?

They told me that they put all ther fresh water puffs in brackish. Couldn't covince them otherwise

For future reference, if you do happen to purchase a puffer in a "wrong" salinity water and you try to acclimatise him straight out of the bag (after letting the temperatures equalise of course), then you may also stress him further (and increase the potential for opporunitsic infections to take hold).

Elsewhere in the forum there are guidelines regarding how to prep a fish for a different salinity - basically involvs a drip pipe into his water (in a qt tank or heated/aeriated bucket etc) that increases (or decreases) the salinity by no more than 0.002/hr this will gradually raise or lower the salinity of the water without stressing your new pride and joy further.

If i knew he was in the wrong salinity i woudv'e taken proper messures. Now i always ask.

Asking isn't always enough. Often times they don't know and just make something up. Asking them to test it isn't much help either sometimes because the hydrometers they use to test it look like they've never been rinsed in their 30 years of service.

That's why I think best practice is to either drip or manually acclimate any new fish to slowly match your tank water. It doesn't take too long, and it's much less stressful even when going from fresh to fresh because salinity isn't the only parameter that will vary greatly between LFS and home tank.

Justin, is this that stupidass store in Madison? If so, I'm not the least bit surprised.

No it's not. I have purchased almost all my puffers from that store in madison and have been very happy with them. I love that store all there puffers look healthy and happy. As for there other fish i haven't looked. I have bought puffers from other places and they died very soon after i purchased them. None i my puffs that i got from there have died or had any real problems. I am very happy with that store.

I admit that when I looked around, the tanks looked clean and the fish well-kept. However, I refuse to give a single penny or support in any way any store that sells fish that have been purposely mutilated.

purposely mutilated, what are you talking about?

Sweetheart parrots. Look it up. Their tails have been purposely hacked off. Those idiots at the LFS sell them. Therefore, I will never give them a penny of my money.

Does the supplier do that?