mustangblue01

About half an hour ago I was sitting watching my green spotted puffer swim around the tank when he suddenly bent in half and fell to the bottom!

I got a bucket of fresh water (by fresh I mean one of the containers of prepped water I keep standing by for water changes) and put him in there. I checked the SG of my tank it was very low. I added some additional marine salt to the buck he is in and an airstone.

I remember this symptom from a friends tank a long time ago, but I can't remember what causes it.

the tank conditions are good, but a bit cloudy. I'm not sure at this point what is causing the cloudiness. I have changed about 15% of the water twice in the last 4 days. All of my levels are good.

I'm thinking the low salt or the cloudiness of the water (both are reasons I quickly moved him to a bucket).

He is just sort of floating around in there now. I dropped a bit of brine shrimp in there to see if he wanted to eat, but no go so I'll have to net it out.

I have only had him a few days and he seems to have been stressed up until today. He was swimming up and down the sides of the tank at a leisurely pace until yesterday. Today he was just nosing around the tank so I thought he was doing fine.

Any ideas as to what is going on?

mustangblue01

Ok. so he is fine now and I solved my own problem. He just needed good water!

For whatever reason, my tank is cycling again. I can't believe that adding one fish (the puffer) to a 50g tank would have that effect, but I did clean the filter at the same time. Newbie mistake, I guess.

I changed 25% of my water becuase my levels were high: ammonia - 1.0, nitrite - 1.0, nitrate - 20. I also upped the salt a bit on this change and will do so again tomorrow when I change a smaller % of water.

I am still going to leave him in the bucket for tonight with the air stone and a heater. He might get bored, but he is swimming around just fine.

I still welcome any advice on puffers or anything else in my tank.

Thanks,
John