The Puffer Forum

i'm new here and you guys really are so knowledgable. i need some help please!! My puffer has been acting very strange and i need some advice. i will give you as much information as i have.
when i first got my GSP about one month ago from my LFS. he is still young- about 1-1.5" long. I put him alone in a five gallon and about 2 weeks later moved him to a ten. his belly has always been dark and he seems pretty averse to the tank lighting. his tank is heavily planted and aerated. i use marine salt to create brackish conditions and have gotten mixed opinions on whether to use marine or just regular aquarium salt. i've given him a wide variety of things to eat - live blackworms, freeze dried blood worms, brine shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, and ghost shrimp so far. he was eating really for a while, but over the last week he has turned dark throughout his whole body and just sits on the bottom of the tank. i can't tell if he's eating, but the food that i put in the tank for him is not left over in the morning so i'm assuming he is. i just got the water tested at petsmart and everything looks pretty good.

nitrates - 40
nitrites - 0
total hardness - 250 (normal for my area)
alkalinity - 80
pH - 8.4 - OUCH! super high- just found that out. is a solution all i need to lower it?
i'm doing a 30% water change right now and adding amquel and will test it again in about 24 hrs to see if that helped anything.
petmart said my salinity is at .36 and they didn't know how to convert it to a specific gravity for me.
my ammonia is at .5 - is this something to be concerned about? will a water change take care of it?

when he decides to come out he gains his color again and seems fine, but he is really not active at all anymore.
since the pH is so high i'm thinking that is the main problem. PLEASE HELP ME OUT!!! i'm new to brackish water, but have been extremely successful with freshwater.

Ammonia & nitrites should be always at 0, nitrates <20. More water changes are in order.

Use marine salt & measure with a hydrometer.

Read the article on them on our Library.

Why do you think the pH is so high? What substrate are you using?

i'm just using regular aquarium gravel. i was told that a hydrometer won't measure the correct salinity because it doesn't go low enough to measure brackish water levels. i did a water change and he still isn't doing much better. he seems to be very sensitive to the light as well. even when he swims around his belly stays totally dark. thanks for ur help so far and any other words of advice are greatly appreciated!

You can use a refractometer to be 100% accurate!

There are plenty of hydrometers that start at 1.00. Instant Ocean & SeaTest are 2 brands.