The Puffer Forum

I've got a 20 gallon high with about a 3" GSP, 4 bumblebee gobies and endlers livebearers. We had 2 of the GSP's but one wouldn't eat one night and died the next day. The other started getting a cloudy eye the day after and it's slowly gotten worse. We had a cloudy eye on one of them a few months ago and it went away after a couple days. I've read somewhere about diet and water being a cause. I feed mine frozen Krill and snails every once in awhile. I gave it a live redworm the other night and added melafix and pimafix. I do regular 25-30% waterchanges each week but havn't had a chance to check the water parameters yet. I've been slowly converting the salinity and have about 1.002-1.003 right now. I'm not really sure what test kits to use with brackish. do I still use freshwater or should I use saltwater? I know there wouldn't be any ammonia or nitrite but not sure on nitrate levels. I use the same water in all my tanks and it runs about 7.0 although there is a piece of driftwood in the tank but doubt it's changed it much. My water is fairly hard with a KH of about 10 and GH around 20 but like I said, this is from past tests of other tanks, this one hasn't been tested. Are GSP's prone to cloudy eyes? I try to feed him many types of foods but he won't accept much. We started with freezedried krill and plankton but they were sucking air trying to eat the floating foods so I decided to get frozen instead and that works much better. I tried live ghostshrimp but they couldn't catch them and ignore them now. I used endlers livebearers to cycle the tank and when we added the puffers they chased them for a few hours and never caught any so now the endlers are overrunning the tank (go figure). They never bothered the gobies. I recently acquired a redworm culture and decided to test one on him and it worked so I'll at least be able to alternate redworms and krill. what else have people found to be readily available and accepted for good nutrition? thanks, Kyle

Please start by reading the info about this species in The Library. I'd bump up the water changes to 50% weekly. You should be able to use the FW test kits for ammonia & nitrItes. The amount of salt you have now is barely considered BW. You can raise the SG .002/week. Keep using Melafix.

will do. I have been changing 5 gallons with SG of around 1.006-1.008 trying to make it slow as not to shock them. I'll pick up the waterchanges and do some testing this weekend. thanks, KYle

You need to make sure the ammonia is down to nothing that could make it very fatal for the fish. You ph should be around 8.0 try using crushed coral to help with the ph. Keep using the medication you are now using it should clear up in a couple of days.

stephen