A new 5 gallon

[Ilminded]

In work, I have a 10 gallon tank with Endler Guppies, 3 Cory Cats and pond snails with Amazon dwarf hair grass, Moneywort and Red Wendtii. My boss recently brought in 3 tanks, another 10 gallon, a 5 gallon and a 20 gallon long. I really don't want to do another planted for the 10 and 20 as the money spent for chemicals will go up (Excel, Iron, Potassium and General Elements). I was thinking of starting the 5 gallon with one dwarf puffer fish (since I have an over abundance of snails). I hear they like to play with bottom so I will be putting "soft sand" (it's what I read it's called when doing research about the fish) for a substrate and moving some of the dwarf hair grass over since its taking over the 10 gallon. My question is, will the grass take to the sand as easily than with sand? Also, for those familiar with puffers, should I start the tank before getting the puffer with snails to allow the snail to colonize the tank, or should I get the puffer and feed it snails from the other tank as so it won't turn into a fatty? The other thing I wanted to be sure about, I hear puffers won't take freeze dried or flake food. As mentioned, I plan on feeding pond snails but was seeing if this is true and that I would need to go out and get frozen food to ensure it is feeding properly?

 

[Terrance]

Feed meaty food. Flakes are not meaty. You can start the snail population if you want prior to introduction of a dwarf puffer, but its not necessary. You can just feed a main staple of snails if you want. Take out the empty shells since some shells might have leftover snail remnants (i.e. only half of the snail meat was eaten), these leftovers will cause phosphate and nitrate to go up. If your plants don't use both of these pollutants, then algae will.

Also substrate does not make a difference for dwarf puffers. You can use any type of substrate.

HTH