The Puffer Forum

Well here we go ive had my GSP since march he is about 3inches and i have him in a 33gal tank with 3 zebra danios (used to be 4) one was eaten, a chinese algae eater a bristle nose pleco, and 5 ghost shrimp. water parameters are good, water changes are done weekly at 25 - 30%. and he is fed frozen shrimp every second day and every once in a while snails. Now here's the potential problem. For the last couple of weeks his belly is mostly black and he hangs out under a rock or under some trees. he eats normally comes out for swims and sometimes his belly will go white for a while but the majority of the time its black. Is this normal??

hope some one can help i would hate to lose him.

You should read the GSP article in the library to get started.

ive read all the articles before

what is the level of salinity?

ive slowly been adding salt but i dont even have a reading on my meter yet

If you've read my article, they you must know that the fish you have, belongs in brackish water & a lot of salt is necessary. You must use marine salt & measure it with a hydrometer. None of your other fish will appreciate any measure of salt in their tank. You need to set up another tank for the other fish or re-home them.

so you think thats why he is black. i turned the lights off last night he turned white and started swimming

That sounds like your problem: too little salt.

Assuming you have a mature filter on a freshwater tank, you can step the salinity up to 1.003 basically in one go. I've taken tanks to 1.005 in one step without problems, but for the sake of caution you might do this in two steps to see how things go. Puffers are notably less tolerant of filtration problems than, say, monos or scats.

Filters at SG 1.005 are basically identical to ones in freshwater tanks, as far as I can tell. It is only when the salinity goes above that do you have the problem of the filter bacteria "changing" to becoming a salt water one.

A GSP should be healthy at SG 1.005 more or less indefinitely, especially if the pH and hardness are nice and high. Over the succeeding weeks, you can tweak the salonity up a little at a time, and aim to have the SG at 1.010 within 3-6 months. That should allow your filter to adapt without the entire aquarium having to be re-cycled from scratch with new bacteria (which would work, but your puffer would be miserable and/or dead).

Oh, the danios, etc., cannot survive in this tank. SG 1.003 will probably stress them severely, and 1.005 likely kill them. If you want to keep the danios and catfish, then return the GSP and either skip puffers entirely or take a chance with a South American puffer. If you want the GSP, then the danios and cats will need a new home. I've no personal experience of GSPs, but on the whole they don't make reliably good community fish.

Good luck!

Neale