poor puffer

[appleblossom]

My borneo loach died a couple of days ago, then when I woke up at 7 today I looked at the tank and my puffer was lying dead at the bottom of the tank and the rest of the fish were at the surface which is unusual. Yesterday the puffer was gorging himself on bloodworm as usual....

I removed the puffer's body and did a 20% water change and everyone seems normal again now.

Water reads Nitrite - 0, Nitrate - 50, ph - 7.2, no test for ammonia...


The onlt things that have changed are - 2 weeks ago I added amquel plus to 2 tanks to try and reduce nitrates, within a week one tank had fungus, one tank had whitespot and the nitrates hadnt moved.

The tank with the puffer (he had no symptoms) in was dosed for fungus last week, and yesterday at full strength...

have I been killing my fish with the fungus meds?


ps - it was a fig 8 puffer in a freshwater community tank, I was talking to CFC only yesterday about setting up a brackish tank for him

 

[wolfie33]

i had 2 figure 8 puffer's
i now dislike like the fish and in my opinion there not worth keeping!
although people would say i'm proberbly not looking after it's needs.I on the other hand find them nasty little fish that are basically terrorists of the fish tank.
As for your question.
After the first one died i noticed a lot of my fish were coming out of there hiding places and had bad "fin nip", but whats relevent like your's is my puffer spent it's last day at the bottom before it died and all the other fish were at the top.Not realising that my puffer was evil i bought another,i only bought this because i had a snail problem and they are the cure.
so i guess thats why your other fish were at the top is because they wanted to make sure it was dead before they went near it(like mine)

Never never again will i ever keep a puffer even if a city of snails move in..

Anyway on a positive note

The best of luck

 

[ger87410]

I just got a black fin shark and their brackish too. U need to check your ammonia (The #1 killer) and get the nitrates down. They should be at 0, if not do a daily water change until they are. The nitrate is poisonous, but not as much as nitrite and ammonia. I'm not sure if 50 is a toxic level or not. I used amquel once in my fish tank and one of my tanks that was finishing up the cycling crashed. Since then I only use amquel in my tap water to get rid of ammonia and even then I wait for atleast 2 hours before I put it in the tank. Amquel, for the first couple of hours after you add it will reduce the oxygen in the water and cause the fish stress and to gasp. I'll never put amquel in water again with fish in it.

 

[havoc_crazy]

odd.. i thought amquel was supposed to remove ammonia
maybe 'm wrong

 

[ger87410]

No, you're right. Amquell removes ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate but will do the other things I mentioned.

 

[appleblossom]

Well wolfie33, sorry you had such a bad experience with your fig 8's. Mine was the most docile, friendly little thing ever, and if other fish pestered it it would swim away rather than nip at them. I have been told that they arent suitable as community fish but it depends on their individual personality, I guess I was just lucky with mine.

ger87410, if my nitrates were at 0 my plants would probably die. 50 is a bit high, it should be below 40 really, but that level shouldnt be toxic.

I cant see there being a problem with ammonia as we have never had one before, plus amquel is supposed to remove it, but I will get it checked anyway.

Thanks for your replies

 

[samsung-401]

ok here is the deal figure 8 puffers are only freshwater when they r yung when they get older they move into brackish waters so keeping him in freshwater killed him.


p.s. I had the same problem.

 

[ger87410]

No, your plants most definitely won't die if the nitrate is 0 and stays there. My nitrates stay at 0 and I have plants. Keep in mind that nitrates are ALWAYS produced whether there's plants in there or not. It's best, and I'm sure most of the population will agreee, to keep you nitrates as close to 0 as possible. Even if you were to remove all of the nitrates leaving none behind (not going to happen), bacteria will produce more. IMO plants don't need a high level of nitrates to be overly productive. I just use plants to cut down on the nitrates and put more oxygen in the water. I use regular water changes to keep the nitrates down. And my plants are growing like MAD.

 

[appleblossom]

ok thanks for the replies. I'll keep doing water changes then to get it down and see where we go from thnere...

 

[LeapFrog_85]

I had a Figure 8 Puffer too and he died. I had a Black Fin Shark ( I believe) and he did. 3 Days later my Puffer and AFC died.