Dwarf puffers

[Bloodroot]

Okay three questions.

1. I want to make a soild hill in the bottom of my tank so that on oneside of the hill I can have one type of substraite on one side and a different type on the other side. A type of aquarium silicon should work correct?

2. My lfs (semi chain store) are pretty good... up to their knowledge on dwarf puffers. They have them in brackish water... *shivers* unfortunatly they are the only place that I can get dwarf puffers in the area. And online shopping is not an option due to the minimum delivery service I have in the area...
So I will need to slowly change out the salt.

So here is my question... how do I do that?

Can I acclimate them in one day? Slowly add fresh water from the tank until the salt level is very minimal? Or do I have to do this over a couple days/weeks? I was really hoping to have a very large snail population in the tank befor I put the puffers in so they will automatically have fresh live food... so salt is not good...

I was thinking about the stress on their poor little body that the salt would be causing. Wouldnt the change in watet out weight the stress they may feel in the chamge?

3. Snails will be enough to start a cycle in my tank, correct? I was going to start with MTSs as I found a really awesome article about never having to "feed" dwarf puffers by having a good MTS population in the tank.

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[dragonfisher33]

i can only answer 2 and 3.

2)drip acclimation. i was in the same situation as you are in. my puffers came from a cichlid system that's naturally high in pH. look up drip acclimation and make sure you go slowly. i don't see a problem with acclimation done in 1 day (i did it in a few hrs). MTS in my opinion is not good for the puffers although some puffer keepers would state otherwise. i would go with regular pond snails for food. the shells on the pond snails are softer compare to those of the MTS and my puffers have had a better time getting to the flesh of the pond snails than the MTS. also pond snails multiply faster than MTS and grow faster-> more food supply for the puffers

3)MTS can start the cycling process but not by much. I would just get a used filter from an existing tank.

 

[Bloodroot]

Thanks! I will look up the drip acclimation.

Yeah I was reading about the snails; MTS vs. pond. What I noted of interest is that Dwarf Puffers that were exposed to MTS snails learned to attack their trap door and not actually try to break apart the shell. Like they would do with a larger apple snail.

Any tips on how to get a really nice population of pond snails in the tank where my puffers will be? I dont have the room to make a snail breeding tank.

I will hook up the filter to my existing tank tonight to start it cycling. The sand will be the same type, would it be benificial to put some of the stuff from my older tank into my new puffer tank?


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[dragonfisher33]

Thanks! I will look up the drip acclimation.

Yeah I was reading about the snails; MTS vs. pond. What I noted of interest is that Dwarf Puffers that were exposed to MTS snails learned to attack their trap door and not actually try to break apart the shell. Like they would do with a larger apple snail.

Any tips on how to get a really nice population of pond snails in the tank where my puffers will be? I dont have the room to make a snail breeding tank.

I will hook up the filter to my existing tank tonight to start it cycling. The sand will be the same type, would it be benificial to put some of the stuff from my older tank into my new puffer tank?


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well, i suggest get a container of some sort (like Pyrex or whatever that has large surface area). go to the local pet store that sells fish. i'm sure they would be glad to give away some pond snails. since pond snails reproduce asexually (just keep on laying eggs by themselves), as long as you keep the water quality OK and overfeed them, they will reproduce massively. the reason why i said do it in a separate container outside of your tank is so that you dont foul the water in the tank by overfeeding. you can drop a wafer into the container and it will feed them for days. when you see the snails trying to climb out of the water, you know you need to do some water change. these snails are not particularly picky about water quality, just make sure the water doesn't start to smell. if possible, although not required, try to keep the water a bit warmer than room temp (~78-80). higher temperature + lot of food = a lot of eggs/hatching.

when you have a handful of snails, you can drop them into your tank and let nature take its course.

 

[dragonfisher33]

btw, you know you have eggs when you see sacs of clear "gel". they will hatch into baby snails in no time.

 

[dragonfisher33]

anything from the existing tank will expedite the cycling process

 

[Bloodroot]

I now have a small reptile carrier with about the 15 pond snails.

I found a silicon for fish tankd and used it to make my substrate dam thing. I will post a pic when I have the tank up and going... its a little out of the box...

And I have 40 MTS ready to take over the pea puffer tank. I did more reading and the pea puffers learn how to eat them. they pretty much just suck them out of their shells... but I will have both types on hand.

My fish guy is looking into ordering stock of pea puffers so I will know tomorrow approximatly when my little guys can be here.

I have my filter attached, with some bio media stuff, to my already cycled tank so that is two weeks before the filter is cycled, correct?

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