Justice Bucket

My Set Up

29 gal tank
2 green spotted puffers
1 mono (bullies all of them)
2 scats
1 malawi cichlid (had two but he was looking ragged because the rest bullied him)
Crushed coral substrate
Red coral with hole
3 rocks I plucked from Dominican beach (problem?)
Plastic plants

salinity 1.005
ammonia 2.0!!!
nitrate 20
70 gal filter (3 level aquaclear)


Tank History
1) Dec set up tank with no salt
2) 20 goldfish to start cycling (LFS recommend)
3) After clearing the carcasses... Waited till Feb 1 for 1st water change
Same filter sponge and carbon
4) Weekly water changes to get Nitrates down.
5) March 1 added all the fish from above (lfs said ok)
6) (Shouldve known) ammonia spike and one of each species looks under the weather including scat with one foggy eye.
7) Lfs said to add anitbacterial medicine and take out the carbon for a week.
8) Other lfs said do water change instead.
9) Did water change and added new carbon.
10) Fish dont look too hot.
11)Realize it may be that the students in my class are putting their bacterial infested hands in the tank to get nipped by the puffers. I shall fail them all.
12) I'm sealing the tank until next water change. Any other suggestions?

Lucy

Hi Justice welcome to Fish Lore

I don't know much about brackish tanks.....I didn't think malawi cichlid's are brackish fish? What kind is she?
I'm not real sure about the compatablity of your fish especially in the size tank that you have.

If your tank was cycled before, it looks like you've lost it. Do you know your nitrite reading?
With your ammonia reading it would be a good idea to start doing daily water changes until you get your cycle back.
If you use Prime or Stress Coat+ as your water conditioner they'll detox the ammonia for 24 hrs. between water changes. The ammonia will still be available to feed the bacteria.

Hopefully other members will have some input.
Good luck, I hope your fish feel better.

agabr123

welcome to fishlore

the only fish in there i can really comment on are the malawi cichlids and the GSP (and pinkfloydpuffer can definitely give you more info on them) it's generally not a good idea to keep malawi's with anything but other malawi's, and they're also not brackish fish. they do best in a pH of around 8 but definitely freshwater tanks. also, IMO a 29 is too small for them. steveangela1 breeds malawi mbuna so she should be able to give you more info on them.

as for the GSP, for two you would need a 60 gallon tank (30 per puffer), and i wouldn't recommend keeping them with any other kinds of fish as they can be pretty aggressive and get up to six inches. also, while they can be kept in brackish tanks it's more cost effective, sometimes easier, and equally as healthy for them to be slowly switched over to full marine as a saltwater tank rather than brackish.

i know that the monos get up to around 9 inches and i'm pretty sure that they need to school, but i'm not 100% on that.

i think that the spines on the fins of the scat might be slightly venomous so that's something to watch out for if you have it in a classroom, but i could be thinking of something else. also, they'll get up to 14 inches so definitely too big for your 29.

as far as the cycle question, aside from the fact that you are overstocked adding all of those fish at once was probably too much on the bioload (although i'm not sure since you had 20 goldfish in there, goldfish are HUGE waste producers so i dont know if you were ever actually able to get a cycle going without their bioload killing it each time). do you have any readings from the time period between when you added the goldfish to when you added the new fish?

oh, also waiting for a month to add any fish probably killed off a lot of the bacteria as well (but perhaps i read that wrong, just to make sure there was nothing in the tank from feb. 1 to march 1 correct?)

sirdarksol

Welcome to Fishlore!
Alex and Lucy are right on. I'm not sure about the scats being venomous (haven't looked into that). The tank is very much overstocked, and the tankmates are not suitable for each other. The puffers can get very violent, and each need much more space to claim as their own (though a 29g would be good for one puffer and only the puffer). The scats and monos get too big, and the cichlid isn't a brackish fish.

Sorry I can't give better news than that.

My suggestion would be to return everything to the store or rehome them to different (bigger) tanks. If you wanted a puffer tank, you could hang on to one of the puffers. It would likely love a 29g all to itself.

pinkfloydpuffer

Welcome!
I agree with what's been said. Monos and scats IMO get too big for that tank, and really need to be in a school (well at least I know Monos do)
Keeping one puffer would be an excellent solution. If you get most of those fish out of there you could probably get the one puffer through with lots of waterchanges and Prime. Keeping anything other than that one puffer in there will eventually end in someone getting eaten, I can almost guarantee it. But, GSPs are so much fun that just having one in a tank to itself is more fun then a tank full of lots of fish! Well, that's my opinion...
Good luck with your tank! I hope it works out for you

Justice Bucket

Thanks for all the info, I've been getting many different facts from my various lfs. I have 2 other tanks I'll spread the fish out into until I take them back to the store. Perhaps figure 8 puffers or dwarf puffers will be able to go into my 29gal. I'll do some more research online because the people I've been talking to in person haven't been that much help. The GSP, scats and mono's are young enough to stay in freshwater or slightly salted tanks till I get them back to the store...

Right now
GSP 1"
Mono 1.5"
Scat 2"
Cichlid 2"

pinkfloydpuffer

You could get 2 figure 8s for that tank (brackish), or quite a few dwarf puffers (up to about 7-9, freshwater) for that tank. Both fish are lots of fun.

agabr123

would you still want just one male DP in a tank that size, pink?

pinkfloydpuffer

It depends. One would be better, but if the line of sight is broken up you could probably get away with it.

sirdarksol

If you go with a brackish tank, some of the small gobies could be thrown into the mix. Bumblebee gobies are an excellent choice for that size tank. You can get a few of them, since each of them claims a small section of substrate.

Justice Bucket

My other puffer is not looking so well. He hasn't eaten the little food I'm putting in the tank (to lower Nitrates). I'm thinking of returning him to the pet store but the trip might kill him. It's 45 min on subway. Presently doing 30% water changes a day to lower nitrates, last test today was just over 20.

pinkfloydpuffer

Puffers are extremely sensitive to water conditions... when a puffer stops eating that's one of the worst signs you can see in them.... I hope he makes it....

Justice Bucket

Me too, should I take him back to the store? It's a long ride for him.

pinkfloydpuffer

Hm... do you have any large container, like maybe a 5 gallon bucket or anything larger? You could acclimate him to brand new clean brackish water in there and change almost all of the water daily and that might be able to get him through until the cycle's done.
I'm assuming the cycle isn't done, I don't remember. Is it just nitrates you're having problems with? Or ammonia and nitrites too?

Justice Bucket

The ammonia's fine. (At last!). I have a 3 gallon bucket that I could put him in. I also have a 10 gallon that I've used to save my Scat but the nitrate's higher than I would like it in there as well, about 15. Just did a 15% water change in there too...

pinkfloydpuffer

If you put him in the bucket it'll require lots of water changes, maybe even more than one a day. So you'd have to be sure you could keep a close eye on the readings.

Justice Bucket

It won thappen that way, my tank is at school and I'll be away on sunday....I could put him in the 10 gallon but ph is 7.1 and I'd have to brackesh it up a little.

Justice Bucket

Also, do snails need a filter? I'm assuming yes. I have this little 2.5 gallon tank that I could put a plant in with some snails from my friend's tank which is infested with them...Want to breed them for the puffer

pinkfloydpuffer

If you don't want to be doing daily waterchanges, then yes.

I wish I could see the little guy.... It's just hard to know exactly what to do when I can't observe him.... maybe he could come live with my GSPs for a while?

Justice Bucket

Yah that'd be nice, He's sort of sitting atop the leaf of a plant. a little dark around his mouth.

pinkfloydpuffer

I'm assuming you're not in Utah though... darn.

Is he curling his tail? Moving his fins or clamped?

Justice Bucket

Still moving his fins and getting a little dark underneath but not near the belly, just the outer perimieter where the white meets the green spotted area.

pinkfloydpuffer

Ok... he's pretty stressed, but not on death's door yet. Try to get those nitrates under 20 asap.

Justice Bucket

Ok, I'll keep up with water changes but I notice that when I do a big one or move some rocks and plants around, he getts even more stressed.

Justice Bucket

FYI, I've stopped using CYCLE in both tanks and just using STRESS COAT + when I add new water.

pinkfloydpuffer

Yeah, my puffs used to be scared of waterchanges too until they got a big new home. Try not to move anything in the tank if you can help it, and be gentle when siphoning.

Justice Bucket

Ammonia 0
Nitrates under 20
Puffer dead

Lucy

I'm really sorry to hear about your puff.
They sure seem like tough little things to keep alive.

Justice Bucket

Thanks, My mono and scat are doing well now though...However I'm mad because the mono is bullying the scat nonstop. I was thinking of returning him, any other options? like getting 2 more scats to balance out the aggression?

Lucy

I don't know about either of those fish, so wait for someone else to advise you on them.

I edited your post because the system recognizes the word you used as a curse word, even though it's technically not. LOL I found out about that myself once.