Best Puffer

[Jimbo7]

Ok so this is uncharted water for me, I haven't had a FW tank since I was little and I daresay it was even a real tank. When I had my large SW tank my girlfriend loved our porcupine puffer, but we had to give him away when we broke down the system. I want to get her some dwarfs, so I need the best, cutest, most amazing dwarfs out there to start planning a tank around for her.

Also, what do you freshies use to purify water? I always just used tap (i was like 8 ) but I assume thats not the preferred method? I'm trying to prevent her from having to use buckets, her apartment is pretty small.

Thanks.

 

[skenny]

use prime to purify the water, and buy a python so you dont have to use buckets.

 

[ilovemydragongoby]

+1
prime is the best product i've used so far.
you dont even have to buy a python my boyfriend made one, i bought a cheap gravel vac and an adapter for the sink faucet, and got some hose. take the hose off of the vac, attach your new hose to the vac end, and the adapter for the sink. viola, just saved your self some money

 

[Jimbo7]

Yea I was planning on giving her my old python, I have one of the crazy long ones. Do you add prime directly to the tank?

 

[skenny]

i would recommend adding it to the tap water but if your using a python its just as good to add it to the tank before adding new water.

 

[skenny]

and im pretty sure there is only one type of dwarf puffer, but they are very cool fish and are very intelligent.

 

[Jimbo7]

Ok, so further investigation, I though all smaller puffers (figure 8, green spotted, ceylon...) were considered "dwarf puffers." They are almost all dwarf to most SW puffers i'm used to seeing.

Oops.

 

[skenny]

well they are small puffer fish but not really dwarf puffers. real dwarf puffers or pea puffers only get to be 1 inch. the figure eight can get up to 2.5 inches and the green spotted up to 8. depending on how big your tank is these may or may not be an option. as per they dwarf puffers you can keep up to one for every 2 gallons.

 

[Jimbo7]

They say to keep 2-3 females per male, so 4-5 dwarfs and maybe a small school of something colorful like tetras ok for a 20g? Running an AC50?

 

[skenny]

i wouldnt add any tetras, most dp are far too aggressive for them. i would reccomend maybe a few oto catfish and some ghost shrimp.

 

[ilovemydragongoby]

puffers will be too aggressive for tetras

 

[ilovemydragongoby]

ghost shrimp will probably make a yummy snack though

 

[skenny]

yeah lol

 

[skenny]

normally with dwarf puffers you want to do a species tank, meaning only dwarf puffers.

 

[JohnPaul]

FWIW, in the past I've kept a pair of DP's in a 10g with several ghost shrimp and the puffers left all but the tiniest alone. I never saw even the slightest hint of aggression from the DP's against the adult ghost shrimp. Of course, that's no guarantee you'll have the same results, but it certainly can work.

Another option for a shrimp would be an amano shrimp, which get much larger than ghost shrimp. Amanos are also much better at helping with algae control.

With DP's, any other fish tankmates (other than perhaps an otto or two) is probably asking for trouble. The DP's may tolerate them for a while and it might even look like the other fish are picking on the DP's...but then one day a DP will decide its had enough and when that happens, it can easily kill a fish 3-4 times its own size.

 

[Jimbo7]

haha aright then, they inherit quite a bit from the puffer family. I'll have to do some looking, i'm not sure she would just like a couple of fish in a tank.

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[sliderfish]

I'd make it puffer only IMO. A small tank with some active, healthy puffers can be fairly amusing to most.