green spotted/f8p and their teeth

[Kakarot]

i have had in the past 5 or 6 puffers mostlly figure eights and they seemed to live a week from purchase. i gave them food but they were not eating it they seemed to want to eat but could not. their color faded and then they would die. later i horrifingly found out later that their teeth needed to be warn down ocationaly or they would grow together. ehh to die of starvation not pleasent.

there were snails in my tank but they did not seem to do any good at all. i recently got two green spotted puffers only and inch maybe less long. the onl;y thing i feed them or the onlything they will eat is freeze dried krill. man do they love that stuff.

my question is at what age do puffers need to start filing down there teeth and what with?

would crayfish be good(living or dead)?

[MonoSebaelover]

Puffers teeth are constantly growing even from birth till the day they die. From what sounds like your past experiences, puffers teeth do not grow that long in a weeks time so you must have unawaringly bought them that way. I would suggest keeping them with small snails all the time and as a treat you could feed them Ghost Shrimp. Also what is water quality (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, salinity, temp)? This could have a big factor as to why they are dying. Anyway, hope this helps and good luck with them.

[cdawson]

Please, nothing that fights back! =)
Just use ghost shrimp, cockles (can be found at any market that sells fresh seafood), people shrimp that's still in the shell, snails, crab's legs, dead crayfish...hmm.. I fed mine a dead fiddler crab =)
I would say the reason your puffers kept dying would be that you never cycled your tank before purchasing them, puffers are very sensitive to ammonia and nitrite. If your tank was cycled you could have had high nitrate. Generally fish don't take that long to die after being brought home if the tank is already cycled and there was a health problem. By then they should have been settled in unless there was a water quality issue. Check your puffers for illness before you buy them, check for sunken stomachs, beaks that are too long, laziness, sunken eyes and such. Puffers do not take transferring over seas very well and quite a few die in transit.

[olaf]

I have fed my F8P and GSP live fiddler crabs (no claws) and I see that they both nibble on the coral heads. I try to keep things as natural as posible.

[Pufferpunk]

Please answer cdawson's question on cycling. He is right, I agree that most immediate deaths of puffers are due to putting them into uncycled tanks.

[Kakarot]

what do you mean cycle a tank?

As for water conditions i have no idea i buy stuff that tells me what levels of elements that are in the water and i follow the instructions on how to lower them but the only thing that happens is it gets worse so the whole water condition is byond my comprehension and influence.

now the tank i got these puffers in is 20-30 gallon with many live plants that never seem to grow at all even with co2. and its been like that long before i got the puffers.

crayfish, fresh shrimp still in shell, fiddler crabs, ect.. are far to big for my puffers to get ther mouthes around, i doubt they could get them around a small pea. so what hard thing can i give them until they are big enough to eat those thing?

[MonoSebaelover]

What kind of filter do you have? Do you know about the Nitrogen Cycle? If not here is a quick summary, if you do you can ignore this. When a fish produces waste it will sit in the water. But once there is some biological bacteria in your filter it can take the waste out of the water and convert it to less toxic chemicals. The process takes the waste which is ammonia and converts it to nitrite (both ammonia and nitrite are very toxic) which then gets converted to nitrate (which is much less toxic). So if you have a new filter with no bacteria the ammonia will spike because there is not bacteria to convert it which will cause an ammonia spike for two weeks after the introduction of fish into an unestablished tank. Then once ammonia settles in the tank then nitrite will spike and that will take another two weeks (on average) to spike and die back down to 0. In an established tank a tank should read 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite at ALL times. This is what is meant by cycling a tank. You have to let the filter go through the ammonia and nitrite spikes. After it is cycled you will only have to check nitrate (it is still good to check the others just to make sure everything is doing fine) and do water changes accordingly. I would recommend a Penguin or Emperor Filter for a tank with puffers since they contain Bio-Wheels which is the most up to date technology that can keep water quality pristine. What kind of test kit are you using? Also what kind of puffers are you keeping? They should eat snails at any size. Anyway, I hope this helps and is not too confusing (the Nitrogen Cycle and testing can be kinda scientific and can easily confuse people).

[Kakarot]

i've got a whisper 20-40 gallon filter. i have never cycled a tank. i just put the water in ad the declorinator and add the fish and let nature work its self out. besides i thought plants would take care of the nitrites and all that..

i am using test strips by junglelabs and its telling me my nitrite is 0 but my nitrate is in the unsafe zone.
nitrate 80 ppm
nitrite 0 ppm
gh 150 ppm
kh 300 ppm
ph 6.8

fish
2 Green spotted puffers
1 violet goby(dragon fish)

[RTR]

Green spotted puffers are brackish water fish, but short term freshwater will not kill them.

The dragon gogby is brackish water too, but does not need the specific gravity the GSPs do.

Puffers are totally unable to withstand any ammonia or nitrite, so that is likely what has killed your puffers in the past. Nitrate that high will have the same effect, but more slowly.

I think you need to read up on cycling tanks and the requirements of the fish you want to keep.

[Pufferpunk]

Do a 50% water change while cleaning the gravel to reduce the nitrates.

Please read this article & all the recomended links: http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/newtanksyndrome.shtml (NEW TANK SYNDROME)

What are the ammonia levels?

Please don't house a dragon/violet goby w/any puffers, they will KILL IT!!!

[Kakarot]

i tried your link pufferpunk but it keeps freezzing my computer.

i'am getting a bioweel filltration pump very soon. hope this will clear up any problem i might have.

[Pufferpunk]

http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/newtanksyndrome.shtml

Try it again. Cut & paste if necessary. It is necessary for you to understand the biological process of a tank before keeping fish, especially puffers. The fact that you think a biowheel will fix the problem, means you don't understand the process.