New GSP tank and they are great!

[mdemille]

Hi all
I know what all will say ( about the new tank) but first let me tell you that I LOVE my puffers and try to give them the best home possible! I have 5 dwarf puffers in a hex tank and they are fat and sassy! They rule the living room and all who enter. Yesterday I picked up a 40 gallon hex tank and set it up. I went into Wally world and there they were.. GSP! I spoke to the young man who had NO idea how to care for the newbies to the store. He was feeding flake food.. no wonder they were quiet! Well, I bought some biological bacterial at Petco, traded the new filter with my filter cartrige from my 29 gallon well establised tank and brought home the babies!
They are eating, though I feed only once a day. I give my puffers bloodworms that are thawed (I also feed snails, krill, and brine switching off). I feed a very few bloodworms at a time off a fork to make sure all are eaten. Can I say the new babies are now fat and sassy. I also threw in about 10 small snails today.. hunt fest!

I will be very careful of the water conditions but I must say I am very happy with the new family members. I just couldn't leave them there to die. I couldn't get them all but I try not to think about that..

Shh don't tell my dwarfs that they have relatives in the house! They think they are the only Puffers I would ever, ever look at!

Mary

[Pufferpunk]

That's great! Did you use Bio-Spira to cycle the water? Keep a close eye on the parameteters for the next few weeks. I'd test daily.

[Jay.B.]

Cool, keep us updated with the progress of the water with the bio additive you used.

I set one up using JBL filter start at the weekend, I had the tank filled and filter running for a week with a block of bloodworm in there slowly rotting down to kick off the cycle, picked up the fish and filter start on Friday evening, nitrates went high within a day and all traces of ammonia and nitrite had vanished, 50% water change on Saturday, and 50% on Sunday and all is well.

I was going to wait and cycle it in the normal way but had been curious about this stuff for a while and thought I'd give it a go, it would seem to have done what it said on the box

Needless to say, my prospective shrimp and snail breeding project has made way for a solitary C. Irrubesco, I thought this might happen, dam lack of will power at least it's another excuse to get another tank at some point

[mdemille]

Well I tested the water today, perfect! The fish are happy and I"m being very careful about overfeeding. I have a question, I have them in fresh water now (they are about 1" long) and want to slowly increase the marine salt over time.. how much should I add per gallon with water changes? If they are fresh water until later in life I want to mimic what they would live in.. how big should they be when they are totally brackish?

How much instant ocean should I start adding with water changes?

Thanks!
Mary
and the crew of five (dp) and the three gsp!

[Jay.B.]

I use Tropic Marin Sea Salt http://www.tropic-marin.com/web/english ... e/salt.htm
at the moment I am adding about 7 grams per litre of dechlorinated tap water to achieve a density / salinity of 1.005 (refractometer tested)
I will however be upping this amount over the next couple of weeks to reach 1.010 by doing more frequent lesser volume water changes at a higher density.

Start off slowly raising the SG by no more than .002 a week so as not to kill your friendly bacteria
you would need to add approx 2-3 grams of salt per litre in the new water you will be adding, check the salinity, and when you reach 0.002 in your tank, or there abouts, up the amount by another 2-3 grams per litre etc. etc. so on and so forth...