The Puffer Forum

Just an update - cycle well on it's way but frequent w/c's still happening. After a 50% last night (changing every other day) ammonia .5, nitrite .25 and nitrate a solid 5 (I guess the media from the O tank helped as I figured it would... just needed to wait on em to multiply). Funny side note - I t...

I picked the tank up on craigslist. Better yet, it's acrylic. I e-mailed the lady and she said she thought it was a 75-90 yet gave dimensions for a 40 (I know better than to even LOOK at a tank without rough dimensions). Ammonia .75 (between 1 and .5) Nitrite 0 Nitrate 5 (not sure if this is a read ...

Rena Filstar XP3. Actually I think I paid $160 for it, but still...

The joy of overfiltration is that once things are stable they stay stable and filter maintenance is almost nil... AND I don't have to hear my filter....

Ammonia 2? Time for a BIG water change, right now! You're right.Just finished one (with buckets it takes SOOOOOO much longer). Actually did a 75% w/c and added aragonite (sp?) sand. Need to figure out some aquascape, but that can happen once levels are where they need to be. The lone terracotta pot...

24 hours... ammonia 2, didn't bother to measure nitrate or nitrite, PH 7.3 (picking up some appropriate substrate tonight...). Just added some media from the O tank (hopefully it helps and won't hurt), will test again tomorrow. I'm going to try and do a 10 -20 gallon (25 - 50 percent) w/c tonight. D...

...I would also add the coral sand now as well, again that's just personal preference, I wash mine before adding it though, so cloudiness was never a problem. I used crushed coral in my 55g tank. The package said No need to rinse, I was jazzed, no rinsing! ...boy was I sorry. It looked like a nucul...

And my test kit is an aquarium pharmaceuticals (thankfully I have spell check ;-)) complete freshwater kit. Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia, and PH. At what SG do I need to switch over to a marine test kit? Ok... gotta start homework (missed that class... have more homework than I can handle yet I'm messi...

The oscars get some aquarium salt, I'm wondering if I went overboard on the salt at one point and that's why the SG is where it is - I'd imagine the pellets have some salt content in em too... I have a big bucket of marine salt for the puffers. Obviously both salts are mostly NACl with the differenc...

as far as salt content is concerned, I've been rather anal about things, I weigh my salt out to the gram and then check it with my Girlfriends refractometer. I have found that 10 grams of salt per liter gives me an SG of 1.008 which roughly translates to every 1.25 grams of salt in every liter equa...

Ok... so I woke up too late to get to school anywhere near on time (and I had to gawk at the fishes... don't think I can shower and do a 20 minute commute in 10 minutes...). Anyways, I measured the salinity in the oscar tank (they almost always get SOME aquarium salt with water changes) and it appea...

Not a bad idea... So drop the SG to 1.002, toss some FW media in, and then raise SG by .002 a week once the cycle is complete. Right? Probably not a bad idea. While we're on the subject, obviously Ammonia and Nitrite should be 0, what levels are "puffer safe" with Nitrate-? And how in the ...

Some pictures of the new guys... someone wanna verify for me that these ARE gsp's? (they were labled "leopard puffers" at the LFS).

OOps... I knew better but got 2 GSP's, non cycled (40 breeder) tank. Hadn't done my research yet either... I've got a decent amount of experience with freshwater (Oscars and goldfish) but no experience with brackish or saltwater. Some specs and questions. I have a bunch of reading to do but figured ...