figure eight lost appetite

[ingo_1978]

I have a figure eight which has been in my tank for over a month. I had originally done a fishless cycle with freshwater as at the time the lfs had told me they were a freshwater fish. I added the fish and to begin with he seemed happy. Then after speaking to people on this forum I realised they they do better in Brackish.

So I gradually added salt water bit by bit and decided to add some bumblebee gobies. Adding the salt seemed to raised the ammonia levels and I found myself doing alot of water cycles. At this time was when the puffer started to loose it's appetite I put this down to the ammonia levels. However once the fluctuations stopped, he still wasn't eating much.

Since then I have tried various things like changing food adding more plants and hiding places, etc. The last thing I've tried is to drop the SG down from 1.05 to about 1.03. Since then he seems to be back to his previous self.

This has made me wonder whether he is too young for brackish water, approx 1.5 inches long. But am worried that this is too low for the gobies? Has anyone else experienced similar or am I just worrying about nothing, he seems perfectly active and healthy otherwise?? Maybe he's still settling in?

 

[CFC]

The puffer should have been fine with the 1.005 SG, this is still very low in brackish terms. I would suggest the puffer was still stressed from the elevated ammonia levels which would have been caused by raisning the SG too quickly (which would also stress the fish) and only just started to feel better at around the same time you dropped the sG to 1.003.
The bumble bee gobies will be fine with the lower SG and you can slowly creep the SG up to 1.010 by changing it by about 0.001 a month, this will avoid shocking the fish by raising the SG too quickly and prevent ammonia spikes.

 

[ingo_1978]

ooops didn't realise the SG would need to be raised that slowly... I'll keep it at 1.003 for now then... I thought 1.005 was best for figure eights and gobies?