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I have an aquaclear 20-50 gallon filter on my 29 gallon tank, and when i woke up today 2 of my 3 puffers were dead and stuck on it . Is my filter to strong and did it kill it or was it maybe something else? I just got them yesterday 3 puffers and 3 ottos. Now i have 1 puffer and 3 ottos.

Sorry to hear about your fish!

Fish can die when you bring them home. Just in case, can you give us the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings? Is this tank cycled? What kind of acclimation did you do?

When fish die they can get stuck to the filter (I have seen that quite a few times)...I seriously doubt they died because of the filter.

Terrible to hear about your losses, it always sad to lose fish.

Lets get down to business. Do you know your water parameters, i.e. ammonia, ph, nitrite, nitrate, etc and tempature. If you don't have tests results, take a water sample to a lfs and bring back the results. If you can afford test kits, I would highly reccomend purchasing some.

How long has the tank been running for, is it cycled?

Did the fish show any visible signs of disease, stress, or any visual indications of illness? White spot, gasping, laying on bottle, etc?

How do you accumalate the fish to their new home, i.e. by floating bag and slowly adding tank water to the bag if ph is different. Is the ph of the lfs tank different than your tank? You can request the ph value of the lfs tank and compare it to yours. If there was a major difference that could some significant stress.

Last edited by openwater at 31-Oct-2004 10:11

I brought in a sample when i bought them and they said it was perfect. Yes it has been running for a while i just recently took my other fish out and added them to the 75 gallon. Also one of the pufferfish that got stuck on the filter looked all "puffed" out. But also its weird because my 3 ottos and my 1 pufferfish left seems to be doing ok.

Ottos are very sensitive (and they seem unaffected)...so I am curious about what happened in your tank. How long did you acclimate them for?

by acclimate you mean float for 20 mins?

Well, that is part of it. Did you add your tank water to their bag? Or did you float them and then add them directly to the tank?

Last edited by solublefish at 31-Oct-2004 10:16

I never add petstore water to either of my tanks. I pour them in a bowl with a net over it and then just take out the net and put them in.

That could be part of the problem. When I buy new fish, I float the bag for about 10 minutes, and then every 10 minutes I add a bit of water from my tank into the bag. After about 30-40 minutes, I take some water out and continue adding water every 10 minutes. I do this for about 1 hour to an hour and a half

This allows for the fish to get adjusted to the water in my tank. If you know your water is very close to your LFS water, you can do the acclimation for a shorter time or visa versa.

HTH

EDIT: Oy vey, my post is hard to read, have I made any sense?

Last edited by solublefish at 31-Oct-2004 10:24

Yes i see what your saying, BUT last time i added fish store water my ph got ruined really bad.

Sorry if my post was worded horribly, I don't add fish store water to my water. They never touch. Trust me, I don't want icky fish store water in my tanks either!

Only add your tank water to the bag, not the other way around.

I also plan on going back to the lfs today theres a guarantee on fish as long as my water is ok. My main concern really is that i didn't want to think that my filter could kill me puffers.

They also didn't know puffers needed snails in their diet...i asked them to save me the snails they collect since they just get rid of them anyways every other day or so.

Last edited by azrael_darkness at 31-Oct-2004 10:34

Yea i read your post wrong lol, yea i could try that. I just think it could have been a bad batch or something, they don't feed their puffers everything they need anyways. I'm probly gonna go back and buy all the dwarfpuffs they have their today just to rescure them.

i could try that

Please, whenever introducing fish into your tank, acclimate them. Two tanks have different temps, but also slightly different water.

Well theres so much contradiction in fish keeping. I've never once had a fish stuck in my filter the very next day and not once had a petstore told me to add my water in their bag. But I learn as i go on. Thanks for the help, as long as its not my filter harming my fish i should be ok now.