The Puffer Forum

Hi everyone,

Had my Valentini puffer for 4 days now, he's feeding great and seems to be loving his new home! I even had him eating some raw king prawn from my tweezers today! It's a new FOWLR tank, I say new the live rock was in and cycling for 6 weeks before I brought the puffer home. My three year old is obviously desperate to get his Nemo home and I'm just wondering how long I should wait to add them? I've tested the tank every day since bringing my puffer home and there's been no trace of any NO3 or NO2 and ph is steady at 8.2.

It's a 180l tank with protein skimmer live rock and live sand.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Please post your water parameters: ammonia/nitrite/nitrate.

Pufferpunk wrote:
Please post your water parameters: ammonia/nitrite/nitrate.

I'm new to this so apologies, I'm using API test strips and a Salifert test kit for Phosphate and I'm getting zero readings for Nitrite and Nitrate levels are still showing zero and phosphate is showing 0.03. What other info should I give you?

A cycled tank should be showing nitrate. Was this LR from an established system?

Pufferpunk wrote:A cycled tank should be showing nitrate. Was this LR from an established system?

No it was cured live rock from my local fish shop. I've never really had any spikes in levels the whole time it's been in the tank and I have about 20kg of live rock in there.

Pufferpunk wrote:A cycled tank should be showing nitrate. Was this LR from an established system?

Also, my local fish shop insist on testing a water sample before selling any marine fish so it's been double checked.

That's a good policy for a store to have. I like that.

It sounds like your live rock, while it was not in someone's display tank, was in fact from an established system.

I bought my valentini (about 1.5") and a 3/4-1" clownfish at the same time. I have a 40g breeder, so it is about the same size. They were both introduced into the system after a brief quarantine and i've had no problems. They frequently co-habitate the same portions of the tank, though they typically have staked out their own ends. I've yet to see any aggression.

Ive also added a much smaller clown about 3 months later. Still there have been no problems. It will be interesting to see how this changes though.

Hillehaus wrote:That's a good policy for a store to have. I like that.

It sounds like your live rock, while it was not in someone's display tank, was in fact from an established system.

I bought my valentini (about 1.5") and a 3/4-1" clownfish at the same time. I have a 40g breeder, so it is about the same size. They were both introduced into the system after a brief quarantine and i've had no problems. They frequently co-habitate the same portions of the tank, though they typically have staked out their own ends. I've yet to see any aggression.

Ive also added a much smaller clown about 3 months later. Still there have been no problems. It will be interesting to see how this changes though.

Yeah the shop I use is great, it's just a man and his wife that own it and it's only them that work there too and they really care about the fish and making sure people are ready to have them! There live rock is in the same system as their tanks I think he told me so it's usually good to go.

Thanks for your reply, sounds like I should be almost ready to add them after a few days in the QT tank I've set up!

Still trying to decide on one more fish to have in with those three. Something colourful preferably so any ideas would be appreciated.

6 days and no reply. What an excellent forum this is!

HUH??? I see several good replys! I'm not sure what you're looking for here.