Hi. Use to have a 55gal. saltwater tank... but recently purchased a 120gal tank for my porcupine puffer to live. After circulating it... I slowly started adding the old tank water to the new water, testing it daily to make sure the salinity was good, ph, nitrates, nitrites, blah blah. all is perfect. Finally the final step... moving my fish...

Umi the puffer, Naruto the clown, and Cloud the blue/green chromis.

After 2 weeks they all seemed to be adoring their new surroundings.

Here are pictures of my fishy friends.


Here's UMI my porcupine Puffer. (He's now 3 months old)


Here are Naruto and Cloud the Clown and Chromis. Both are about 8 years old.

They all seemed to leave well enough alone...


Sadly

Until today.

Cloud accidentally got killed by Umi. And I feel terrible. Umi didn't attack him... he never attacked them, even in the smaller tank. He's a fairly level tempered fish. But what happened was...

I always feed Umi his krill, then I feed the others their flakes... today for some reason... Cloud was interested in Umi's Krill. He's never cared before. Even in the smaller tank he never paid attention. But today he was curious and wanted to get up close to it.

When Umi was lunging for the Krill, Cloud swam in front of it at just that moment and got caught in the face by Umi.

Umi let go right away and swam away. Cloud swam in the other direction.

I left the other tank running as a sick tank and immediately took cloud out and put him into the sick tank. but I knew it was too late.

At first he was looking normal... but I could see he had teeth marks near his mouth where he got bit.

Within seconds his skin started getting purple/red spots all over as the posion started working its way through. It went so fast there was nothing I could do.

Cloud died 2 minutes after being bitten. I didn't even have time to humanely Euthanize him. I feel so bad. I had him for so long. And even worse, a few months ago, his buddy died of old age.

*Sigh* I feel so bad. I was thinking of keeping them apart and just giving the whole 120g tank to Umi and leaving the other 2 in the 55... but I thought... Umi is still small... It would just be the three of them... there's plenty of room, plenty of hiding places... they're all fed well enough... and like I said... they got along in the samller tank so now they have even more room to avoid eachother...

And for a long time they did get along in the bigger tank... it was a total accident... Umi was trying to go for the krill, not Cloud. Cloud just swam between them before Umi could stop. Its partially my fault. I should have shooed him away before dropping the Krill in.

I feel bad for Naruto too. Now he's without both his chromis buddies. :(

But Umi and Naruto are both ok. I think Umi felt kind of bad in a weird way. After it happened... he actually swam away as if he knew he did something bad... and it took him almost an hour to coax him to eat some krill. It was like he was scared to take it. but he finally ate, and settled back down. Naruto ate ok too, so I think they'll get over it sooner than I will.

Well... that's the update for now.

The soap opera will continue next week.

Sorry to hear about your loss. :hug:
Unfortunatly accidents happen even in the fish world.
Glad to hear that they aren't too traumatised by the event, and are enjoying their new home.
I didn't realise that a puffer's bite was that deadly, but it makes sence I guess, in the wild they need a quick, clean kill to survive.

Well It clinches it.

It looks like Umi does feel guilty for what happened to Cloud. Poor guy.

Feeding time has been a little nerve racking for him lately.

Now he is nervous about taking Krill from my hand... and if Naruto gets too close to where he's eating, he runs away until Naruto swims in the other direction, then he'll come back to eat.

He's not as aggressive during feeding time... he seems to take it more daintily... and he's not playing the spitting game the last few days. (Where he sucks in a bunch of water from the top of the tank and spits it at me like a watergun.)

He seems fine otherwise. Still eats his fill, still plump and swimming good. So he's healthy... I think he's just nervous after killing cloud during the feeding. :( poor little guy.

I'm sure he'll snap out of it tho, eventually.

Well, it will soon be close to 4 months since receiving Umi, my puffer, as a gift.

The first week I thought he would't make it... but here its almost 4 months and he's doing great.

I still feel bad about Cloud... the fish he accidentally bit... but sadly- these things happen in the circle of life.
:rip:

However, all is still going good. Naruto is doing well too. When I cleaned last, I knocked a conch shell over and Naruto has decided to make that his house.

Umi has tried some new food. He still really loves Krill, and we found he could take or leave clams... but I also sadly found out he enjoys ghost shrimp. (live). I hate to do that to the poor things, but they offer good calcium and help to keep the beak in good condition.... so they make the perfect snack. I started giving him about 4 every other week now.

*Sigh* that circle of life thing. I hate doing it... but since I have a carnivor, I have to do what's best for him.

Here are some new pictures of Naruto and Umi. (Prior to cleaning the tank... that's why there's some gross brown alge. Thankfully I haven't had too much of an alge problem... so yay!)





anyhoo. I'll update you guys again soon!

cool thanks for updating. your puffers look real healthy and happy.:tup:

Just an update for everyone. ^_^ :woo:

Miss me? :hug:

I've been away because of surgery. Talk about hell. Pain, couldn't walk, and worse, because my Umi and Naruto were in a tank upstairs in my place, I couldn't take care of them.

Luckily my brother helped out by feeding them per my instructions. but argh, he left the light on the whole time.
:banghead:

anyway. So I had a bit of Algae when I got home. I'm still recovering (I went from a "put NO weight on your leg cast to a walkable cast). So I can't clean it as well as I want to, but they seem pretty happy.
:rockon:

I got two cute pictures of them... I actually got Naruto looking directly into the camera, and he looks almost as if he's smiling, and I got one of Umi just after he finished eating. :clap:

I'll throw in a link to what my leg looked like after surgery with a warning that its kind of gross. (PS, my ankle isn't that fat- its just VERY swollen. lol)
:cen:

Surgery pic
surgery pic 2





there's your update! enjoy!

Your guys are looking great, what part of your ankle/foot did you have surgery for? It kind of reminds me when a friend shattered his heel and looks quite a bit different than when my heel touched my knee. Achilles damage bone reconstruction or ligament related?

In my november car accident, I tore the tendons in my foot, so they went in to shave them down, and sew them up. If its not strong enough for what he did, he'll have to remove the ligiment from the back of my leg and wrap it around the tendons to create a new one.

but he's going to wait to see how I fair with what he did, when I go to physical therapy.

It wasn't fun I can tell you that much.

but I have a low pain tolerance threshold. :dummy:

Hope you get to feeling better soon!
Your guys look great! :kewl:

I fed my Umi some ghost shrimp today. Something I didn't know about ghost shrimp... those bloody things sting!

There was one really agressive one that attacked me everytime I put my hand in the bag. (Usually I just grab em by the tail and drop em in.)

It was like getting picked by a plecco's barb.

Thank god they're not posionous.

Umi adores them. There's been a few times where I thought if he got anymore excited he'd accidently take my finger with him.

Which leads me to a question... I wonder how deadly a small porcupine puffer bite would be to a human, say they were accidentally bit during feeding time.

Anyway.

Not much else going on. Both are still doing good, and I'm recovering nicely myself.

Till next time. ^_^