Best fresh water puffer for a 55 gallon tank?

[Hunter]

I've recently moved and have an empty 55 gallon incorporated into one of my indoor aquaponic display systems. The water quality is pristine and I wanted to upgrade from experimenting with dwarf puffers to something a little larger. Obviously since its aquaponics it needs to be a freshwater puffer, but I have really no idea where to start as far as the larger freshwater puffers are concerned.

Anyone have some reccommendations for a very active and personable kind of freshwater puffer?

[nzac]

If I only had a 55 available for a freshwater puffer I would probably go with abei, both of mine are pretty active fish, seem to act like smaller, quicker versions of my fahaka. I only have experienced dwarfs, fahaka, Congo, arrowhead, saps, turgidus, and Palembang though. I really like the Palembang too but he likes to just chill in his cave when the lights are on

[RTR]

Colomesus asellus, commonly known as the South American Puffer, or SAP, but only if you are willing to go into large-scale snail breeding at home with Ramshorn (best choice) or common pond snails (second best) or both - in separate containers. These puffers are active to hyperactive, fast swimmers, will school in strongish current along the front glass when not actively searching through the rest of the heavily planted tank for snails. If you provide 95% of their diet in well-fed live snails of the two species listed, you will have no incisor problems. Warning: Lesser diets will force you into frequent dentistry. A 55 will house 3 or 4 SAPs. The front 1/4 of the of the tank should be unplanted or restricted to Anubias nana petite. The rest of the tank should be densely planted. Fairly strong current is needed along the front glass. Once the plants are established (3-6 months), a couple of Otocinclus catfish can be added for live plant leaf algae grazing. The set-up should run 10-15 years with annual or alternate-year thinning of plants, depending on the growth rates of the particular plants. IME the SAPs will also last through that long. The daily light cycle should be 10-12 hours ON time. Nitrate should be held to 15 ppm or less. Feeder snails are best added during the dark cycle while the SAPs are sleeping - that allows the snails to spread and achieve some relatively exposed, some relatively concealed. That allow more food-searching work for the SAPs. No other livestock is needed or desirable.

The above is one of my long-time favorite puffer tanks. Similar set-up in 75s or 120s work quite well also, with more SAPs.

[nzac]

^better option, I did really like my saps but the only way I could get them to eat the snails was if I crushed them and therefore had to trim teeth every 3-4 months.

[RTR]

I've only very rarely had to trim SAP incisor plates since I learned to keep them healthy on home-grown snails. I've fed majority of Ramshorns with a non-trivial percentage of common pond snails. I do use a lot of plant filters as accessory tanks to displays, so I do tend to generate a lot of "puffer food"...

Actually, my very first puffers - many years ago - were to eat excess snails from Cichid fry grow-out tanks. The GSPs I bought for that were so interesting that I end up a puffer nut rather than a Cichlid freak.

[Arny]

I've read that SAPs in the wild eat algae off of rocks which keeps their teeth short

[RTR]

The part of the year when they are Main Channel schooling fish that is likely to be the case, but likely it would be grazing off driftwood as much as rocks. We don't know as much about their breeding period in the floodplains.