Dwarf Puffer Fish

[justin9990]

I recently rescued three pea puffers. The person I bought them and wasn't willing to put in the work. Unfortunately I didn't have a cycled tank ready for them so I am cycling the tank with the fish in there. I have a 20 gallon set up for them. I do have an established 10 gallon tetra tank. I started out testing levels everyday and changing the water every three days. Ammonia showed up in the .5 range for one day and then zeroed out. The nitrites have been sitting around 3. I started doing daily water changes since the nitrite spike. I also had to change their filter because it completely clogged up. I took the filter cartridge out of the tetra tank and put it in the puffer tank filter since they are the same size. I skipped water change on that day. I do have nitrates so i know the tank is cycling, I have just been nervous doing so many water changes. Should i continue on the path I am on? I only have the three puffers right now, once the cycle is completed I am going to pick up three more. All of the puffers seem fat and happy. I have been feeding them crushed ramshorn snails(I have an infestation in my 6 gallon betta tank) and frozen blood worms. The bloodworms are a bit challenging as they are messy and the puffers will only eat them if they are moving. Anny advice for feeding would be great. I am going to order a kit and brine shrimp eggs to start farming brine shrimp for them.

 

[Andy Sager]

#1) Make sure the nitrates are not coming from your tap water.
#2 ) With some test kits ( i.e. API liquid test) you get a false nitrate reading when you have elevated nitrites so I would not even start testing nitrates until the nitrite level is on it's way down. When they are coming down, it means the microbes that convert nitrite to nitrate are finally present.
#3) By using a filter cartridge from a cycled tank in a new tank, cycling should go quickly because the microbes you are trying to create will already be on the used filter cartridge. We're talking a couple of days usually vs weeks. In the future however, you only need to rinse off these filter cartridges so that water flows through them in order to keep the nitrifying microbes alive. One potential problem you may have created was because you removed the whole cartridge from the Tetra tank, you most likely removed the largest collection of nitrifying microbes in the tank so you really want to keep your eyes on that tank for any rises in ammonia and nitrites.

As for foods, the brine shrimp nuplii is a good idea as live foods do help keep the fish actively looking at foods for feeding on but they are the most nutritious for only about the first 6 hours after hatching because they are hatched with a yolk sac which they absorb relatively quickly after hatching. So if you have too much hatched nuplii, freeze them before the 6 hours is up. While puffers are carnivores and do not eat much in the way of vegetable matter, you might want to try feeding some gut loaded frozen brine shrimp once or twice weekly and frozen Daphnia as well.
Hope this helps.