The Puffer Forum

Oh Thank you sooooooo much!! That's a huge relief!! Whew!! I was starting to get worried! I had no idea that f8's had spines!
Thanks for the compliment Goonerman1

I've been looking at some other pictures i took that same night... The spots look yellow in most of the pictures... Could it just be his natural coloration...?

I was reading about ich/ick in some posts, and someone mentioned that it looked like someone sprinkled salt on the fish... That reminded me of a close-up i took of my f8 a while back that i thought looked a bit unusual. There were faint white spots on his back (only on the back as far as i could see...

OK, well the mystery of the hermit crabs is finally solved!(sort of) I was away for a couple of days and upon my return, i noticed that my F8 had eaten one of the hermits! (surprisingly, it was the better hidden one, but it was also on the coral, so i guess the puffer knew about it all along! 8) Wel...

The argument towards eating the hermits wasn't so much for the crabs themselves, but apparently the F8's like to chew on the shells even after the crab has been eaten or has vacated. The shells are apparently good for the teeth, but it doesn't matter since the F8 simply isn't interested in them. The...

My aquarium varies around 1.010. Bear in mind that the hermits were originally meant to be eaten by the puffer pretty much immediately, so i never anticipated them around more than a day or two... They were in a marine aquarium with a GSP in the pet shop, but i was told that they'd be fine long enou...

Ok, so i pretty much gave up on the "shells" mainly because i couldn't figure out what they're called in English. I picked up some brackish snails (black shell, forget the name but it had something to do with "stones" or "rock"...) who i'm hoping to breed, as well as so...

I'm worried about my puffer's teeth and I'm having a hard time finding snails at the local pet shops. Last night i was grocery shopping and i noticed lots of different shells for sale. Some were actually really small! Some of them didn't look alive, but some of the bigger ones (like an inch or so) w...

Cool, thanks! I'm a bit relieved that i may not have stunted his growth! :) Btw, is more complex decor better? Will complexity of tank help the growth? The way i have my 15G is pretty complex, with lots of places to hide and line-of-site cuts and all that. I think there's a good variety of plastic p...

Just out of curiosity, how fast do F8's grow? Is it true that they grow based on the size of their tank? I have one F8 in a 15 gallon brackish tank. When i got him, i was misinformed about the size of the tank that i should keep him in, so he spent a few months in a smaller (about 3 gallons) tank. C...

Hi, i've been wondering this for a while now... What does it mean when you say "cycle your tank"? When i got my puffer, the store clerk told me to let the water sit in the tank filtering and airrating for a couple of days before putting in the puffer. I was also told that it would be a goo...

OK! I'm glad i don't have to completely drain the tank every time i do a water change/cleaning, thanks everyone! :) When i change the water, should i change the filter media before adding the new water, or should i change the media after re-filling the tank to let the bacteria in the filter get into...

Just want to start by saying a big thanks to everyone for the advice they've written on this forum. It's been the best -- and most importantly the most consistent source of information about puffers I've found online. Thank you! I have one young Figure 8 puffer and thanks to advice on this forum, I'...

Ok! The pet shop staff where i bought my puffer really had no clue about them. They tried to make me believe that 2 puffers would definitely fight amongst themselves, but that 3 or more wouldn't. Sounded like dodgy logic to me so i chose to ignore it. (probably nothing more that an attempt to sell m...

I'm in a smallish town north of Tokyo, Japan. The pet shops here aren't all that great, but one of my co-workers breeds betas so I'm going to ask him for advice on aquarium supplies and good pet shops. I definitely don't want my puffer to die prematurely, so I'm going to look at bigger tanks when i ...