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Puffer Pandemic!!!!


scales & tails fishfa

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Me ticked off ----> l:(

I set up this small tank thats about 20-25 liters. It had matured by letting it cycle through and having various fish in it over a month. I checked all the ph, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite and it was all fine. I added a bit of aquarium antiseptics, like stress guard, every now and then...... IT WAS ALL PERFECT!!!!! :evil: I removed all the fish that were in there, had it cleaned and bought a dwarf puffer. I was perfectly healthy when I got it. I acclimatised it over an hour and set it in my aquarium. After an hour I came back to feed him some blood worms and he was floating at the top dead, covered in white, gluey looking stuff. After a week I bought another puffer from a different source and the same thing happened and I tried a 3erd time and it happend again. :cry:

What is happening!? I really like dwarf puffers and want to have one. In the tank there are no other fish. The equipment is all safe. I it is some bog wood, a few small snails ( puffers eat them) and lots of plants.

Please help. My birthday is coming up in a week or so and I want another puffer for my birthday, but I want him to live!!!!

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I removed all the fish that were in there, had it cleaned and bought a dwarf puffer.

How much did you clean it?

It sounds very suspicious...

Never heard of anything like this before but if it's happening in matter of hours then a whole tank tear down might be needed.

Good luck

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could it be the same gooey slimy stuff I was having on my heater suction cups of ONE particular brand? seems to hit new heaters of that particular brand. I have had it in all 3 tanks when I first set them up.. but no fish losses because I wiped away and suctioned off every day.

I'm hoping to have some dwarf puffers one day .

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these guys do not like raised ammonia or nitrite levels

your existing fish can live with higher levels if it raises slowly in the tank

adding a new fish even with an extended float off period can still shock sensitive fish

being slimy coated after death suggests the mucus layer on the fish has reacted to water conditions

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what is your pH?

and how did you introduce them into the tank?

are you talking to me phoenix? don't know the ph i don't measure it, tank has been running for around 1 1/2 years and is planted, i would hazard a guess that its around the 7.2 mark. I didn't do anything special to introduce them, i actually just made sure hte water was the same temp and put them in. I think sometimes you can stress a fish out if you take too long acclimating. They are happy wee fellas, they are in a 40 litre tank with an SAE. They are around 1cm long at the moment, fed them some bloodworms yesterdy and the bloodworm was bigger than the puffer :o still managed to eat two of them though.

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Puffers have no gill coverings, so are very susceptible to ammonia as others have previously said. They also cannot cope with nitrate, copper or chlorine. That means that you need to make sure that your water has been sitting for at least 24hrs before introducing them, and that NO copper has been used to medicate your fish.

I would suggest that you have probably used a copper based medication that has been absorbed into your substrate and decorations and is now leaching into the water.

You should always drip acclimitise puffers and other fish that don't have gill coverings over an hour or more because they can deal with changes in water chemistry better over an extended period.

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I'm not convinced gill coverings, or lack of it, is going to significantly matter to an organ that is fully immersed in a continuous flow of water?

Apparenly that's the reason why they can't handle copper. Whatever the reason for their sensitivity, copper is still my guess.

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Hi there.

Still don't know whats wrong. I checked the back of all the products I used and theres no copper in the products. These are freshwater puffers. Amonia, nitrite and nitrate where zero according to a few tests. The ph was 7. There were no other fish in the tank. There was some new stones, gravel, bogwood and plants that I bought from HollyWood Fish Farm and washed well. The tank had matured.

PLEASE HELP ME?!

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No copper pipes. Just a sponge filter with some active carbon that had been washed out properly. I've left the puffer thought for now though. I have cleared it out whilst I cycle my marine tank again as it has had major problems and now the small "puffer to be hopefully" tank is housing some corals. They're all perfectly happy in the tank. Oh well. Try again in a few months. :roll:

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