I started doing my regular daily cleaning of my tanks this morning. I use a air-driven vacuum to get food debris and fish waste out of the tank, and I do this every morning because with puffers, any nitrite build up is a bad thing.
I went to do my male Congo puffer's tank and I noticed that he was quite still, usually they aren't keen on the vacuum and go the other way. So I touched him with the vacuum only to find that he was dead!!
I am totally bummed out! I don't know why he's died. He was fine last night. I took water samples and the ammonia and nitrite values were at 0.25 which I know isn't good, but I believe they were driven up by the dead body because I'd guess he died last night, he was good and stiff and had the glazed over look. At any rate, I've had puffers in much higher readings than that, and these particular puffers too.
I had to separate the male from the female a couple of weeks ago because he wasn't allowing her to eat -- but I thought everything was fine. They were in a partitioned off tank, so they could see each other but they could not hurt each other. Now we are wondering if he died from not being near her? Sounds silly but all sorts of thoughts go through your mind when you lose a fish, especially a fish you are very fond of. They weren't even close to being old enough to mate yet, so it wasn't anything like that.
I'm just very bummed!
