I was only saying that if any characters were to be excluded, I could see a possible reason for @ and #. But it's a stretch. Considering regular words you CAN'T use on Neopets because they have other less desirable words in them (grapes, anyone?), it doesn't really surprise me much that this insanity has bled into the password system.
Whoops! I changed my password with the old system. lol Logged out and back in to check, and it works fine for me.