My Puffers: 1x GSP (Bolla), 1x m. something. Bought as a leiurus, maybe a turgidus (Tiger), 1x c. irrubesco (Tott(a) aka Houdini) 1x c. salivator (Jack the Ripper), 1x m. cochinchinensis (Hufflepuff - R.I.P.), 2x c. lorteti (Tommy and Tigern = Calvin and Hubbes), 1x m. suvatti (Koseklumpen), 1x m. palembangensis (Dragonfly), 2x t. biocellatus (Koken and Fiken).
Jase wrote:MTS= Malaysian Trumpet Snails= Evil.
took me forever to kill them all.
LOL. Yes, I'm also a MTS hater. People have mixed experience with them though. I think you either love them or hate them (they did their best to destroy my filter, but I won in the end ). They breed very easily and very quickly, and is, as Jase says, very difficult to get rid of if you want to. And if you have a tank full of them, and have to use meds that will kill them, you're into big problems with the water (you'll have a tank full of rotting snails. Ewww!). But they also do a good job with two things: they keep the sand from sinking together, which is good for the plants, and they are good at removing dead fish (or things like that). I've never had MTS in a puffer tank, but I can imagine it can be a problem with the puffer eating them. Snails are snacks for most puffers. And there's also the danger of the shell of MTSs breaking the puffer's teeth. MTS has a shell that is very hard, and that's why this is the snail you should not give your puffers. When it comes to a baby Fahaka, I guess it depends how big the puffer is, whether the MTSs could be dangerous for its teeth (I have absolutely no experience with Fahakas though, so you should listen more to the people who actually has one).
Inger Anne
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Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider! -George Carlin
My apologies for raising an old thread, but there are some things here I'd consider to be wrong. While sand isn't the right choice for everyone, the reasons for or against it are (in my opinion) rather different to those articulated here.
For a start, if you're finding fish faeces are collecting on sand but not on gravel: ask yourself why! The reason you don't see fish faeces in a tank with gravel is becomes the stuff sinks into the gravel where it can't be seen. There it breaks down slowly, adding to the nutrient loading of the tank. On a sandy substrate the faeces can't sink down. They're more visible.
Now, if they're just sitting there, the reason for that should be obvious: lack of circulation. If you have enough water movement, then the faeces will get sucked into the filter and taken out by the mechanical filtration media. But if you aren't seeing that happen, and the faeces are sitting there, then you likely also have problems with oxygenation of the lower level of the tank, heat distribution, etc. So don't think of sand as "bad" because faeces sit there in your tank; think of it as an early warning system!
As for anoxic layers in the sand... garbage. Even if these do develop, there is no evidence they cause problems, and counter-evidence they actually have a slight benefit in terms of nitrate reduction. Plants will gently oxidise the substrate anyway, as will burrowing fish. Should any hydrogen sulphide escape into the water column it will be oxidised LONG before it harms your fish.
Think about this logically: ponds routinely have anoxic sediments, and anoxic conditions in living rock in marine aquaria are considered essential. Why freshwater aquarists perpetuate this myth of deadly anoxic sediments eludes me.
Finally, Melanoides snails. Anyone who thinks these pose a risk to their pufferfish has obviously never seen pufferfish in the wild. Pufferfish bite off chunks of coral and destroy oysters for heaven's sake! While I've *heard* stories about puffers breaking their teeth on Melanoides snails, I've never ever seen any evidence for it, just rumours. Indeed, while I've heard many people admit to breaking their pufferfish's teeth using cuticle clippers, I have yet to hear anyone wanting to ban that because it's risky! So let's get a sense of proportion here...
Pufferfish hunt sensibly; they have to. They select appropriate prey and sample carefully before going for the "crunch". Evolution has programmed them to be selective. I've yet to see any pufferfish of mine crunch open an adult Melanoides, however hungry they were. They do eat the juveniles though, and sometimes even tear the feet off from adult Melanoides. But that's about it.
As for Melanoides numbers: these are directly proportional to the food they have available. If you have a plague of them, then you are not keeping your tank clean. Simple as that. Melanoides cannot break the laws of physics: they reproduce only as fast as they can given the available energy. Lots of food for them = lots of baby snails; limited food = fewer babies. This should be obvious. If you want to control Melanoides snail populations, simply keep your tanks clean.
In any case, they're a real blessing, being superb algae-eaters and sand cleaners in both freshwater and brackish water aquaria. Combined with silica sand, I've found that they seem to work to provide a natural way for Colomesus puffers to trim their teeth. Not sure how or why, but it *does* work.
nmonks wrote:
As for anoxic layers in the sand... garbage. Even if these do develop, there is no evidence they cause problems, and counter-evidence they actually have a slight benefit in terms of nitrate reduction. Plants will gently oxidise the substrate anyway, as will burrowing fish. Should any hydrogen sulphide escape into the water column it will be oxidised LONG before it harms your fish.
Think about this logically: ponds routinely have anoxic sediments, and anoxic conditions in living rock in marine aquaria are considered essential. Why freshwater aquarists perpetuate this myth of deadly anoxic sediments eludes me.
Something that you have not experienced then Neale. To simply dismiss the possibility without any experience nor scientific backup is of little help. I have witnessed loosing three puffers to this problem. Whilst I do not have scientific proof, the experience of it happening is as good to me.
nmonks wrote:
Finally, Melanoides snails. Anyone who thinks these pose a risk to their pufferfish has obviously never seen pufferfish in the wild. Pufferfish bite off chunks of coral and destroy oysters for heaven's sake! While I've *heard* stories about puffers breaking their teeth on Melanoides snails, I've never ever seen any evidence for it, just rumours. Indeed, while I've heard many people admit to breaking their pufferfish's teeth using cuticle clippers, I have yet to hear anyone wanting to ban that because it's risky! So let's get a sense of proportion here...
Again something else you dismiss without experience. I and other well experienced puffer keepers have over the years posted their experience of tooth problems with puffers and MTS.
Some call it a product of a mis-spent youth, I call it Rock n Roll !
From reading nmonks post I'm leaning towards what he said makes sense. Not being rude but I'm curious Rocker do you know for a fact your fish died from anoxic layers in your tank?
As for feeding MTS I'm interested in nmonks responce to you Rocker. I have MTS and rams in my 10g critter/snail tank that the LFS gave me as I had no idea and apparently they had no idea MTS are known to be bad for puffers. I have to get rid of the MTS without throwing them in the trash.
55g-2 green spotted puffers 1 year old Nov 08!
20g-5 leopard danio,4 whiteskirt tetras, amanos, nerita snails, 2 neon tetras
H2S: I believe this is a question of RedOx potential (also referred to as ORP). A DSB tank with sufficient surface current has a ORP too high to allow H2S to exist in the open water. If the powerheads stop, the ORP will drop significantly, oxygen will be used up (a sandbed uses up much more oxygen than a gravel bed due to the larger surface), H2S can exist and in combination with the lack of oxygen kill fish. This has happend in marine tanks, and the main reason why a working DSB has to live in order to provide some mixing up of the ORP zones by digging, detritus eating animals, and also burrowing filter feeders. I have measured such low redox potential in many layered lakes, and those layers are free of higher life (also due to the lack of oxygen). The fish in the higher layers are not affected by the H2S.
I agree with Rocker that sand beds can be related to H2S production (especially in freshwater DSBs without all the invertebrates common in marine setups) and more important use up of oxygen , and gravel beds are more safe, but I also agree with Neale that with sufficient current the ORP is too high to let these things happen, and that anoxic zones are perfect for natural nitrate reduction.
As a side note I have actually seen a puffer break a tooth on a grain of gravel he attacked while missing a Cherry shrimp.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
Corvus -- I agree with you that bioturbation is an important part of managing anoxic conditions within aquaria. Whenever I talk about using sand in aquaria, I *always* make the point that alongside the sand (unless it is very shallow, say 5 cm or less) you need to plan for at least some "aeration" of the sand. Melanoides snails, certain fish, and of course plants will all do this. I've never knowingly advocated dumping a 15 cm sand bed into a freshwater tank and leaving it there!
Rocker -- I can't speak for your experiences. If they've convinced you, then that's fine and I have qualms with that. But until I see published evidence that hydrogen sulphide bubbles have killed a fish, I will remain skeptical. I've not yet spoken with anyone who has (for example) actually dislodged bubbles of hydrogen sulphide gas from the sand in their tank or pond, and then suddenly seen one or more fish keel over from hydrogen sulphide poisoning. That's what I need to believe that sand is somehow dangerous. Not "my fish died for some reason, and I have sand in the tank, and therefore the sand killed my fish", and those are the only reports that I've come across I'm afraid.
My Puffers: 1x GSP (Bolla), 1x m. something. Bought as a leiurus, maybe a turgidus (Tiger), 1x c. irrubesco (Tott(a) aka Houdini) 1x c. salivator (Jack the Ripper), 1x m. cochinchinensis (Hufflepuff - R.I.P.), 2x c. lorteti (Tommy and Tigern = Calvin and Hubbes), 1x m. suvatti (Koseklumpen), 1x m. palembangensis (Dragonfly), 2x t. biocellatus (Koken and Fiken).
I must agree with Neale. I've never ever heard of anyone having lost a fish because of some bubbles coming from the sand. Not one single person I've ever talked with in any fish keepers forums has ever heard about it either. I have 25 tanks, and 23 with sand. I've never come across any trouble because of it. Actually I find sand the absolutely preferred substrate in my tanks, and will change into sand in my 24th tank as well. And I don't keep MTS. Not ever again. They did what they could to damage my filter. Every week I had clean the snails out of it, to keep any water flow through it. Luckily they all died because of some medication, and I won't let them into any tank any more.
When those bubbles are released into the water, they will go so quickly to the surface that there won't be time for much of the stuff to get resolved into the water. So I don't see how it can harm anything else but the smell in your nose at the moment it reaches the surface.
Inger Anne
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Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of them are even stupider! -George Carlin
if you have calcium deficient water, your MTS will have weak shells...
I had hydrogen sulphide bubbles in my small tank for snails and my mollie fry. it kinda scared me, but it never hurt any of them. they actaully grew really fast... idk, I don't have near as much experience, so I can't say much...
-Jase
edmlfc1 wrote:A house without a puffer is not a home.
Most hydrogen sulfide will not be visible as bubbles. This gas is pretty water soluble (about 2 g/l depending on temperature) as HS- and H+ ions, you will smell it, not see it. 1 gram/litre is deadly to most vertebrates almost instantly.
In the field you smell the water for rotten eggs and measure the ORP. If it is below -300 mV, H2S is produced, the oxygen is used up completely. If flow through a lake descreases for whatever reason the ORP decreases (can also decrease due to other reasons) in the upper layers of the lake, and pretty much everything larger is dead due to the lack oxygen and the H2S (choose what you like better). I have had that also in snail tanks with little (or no) filtration.
In an aquarium this could only happen when the current from the filter and the powerheads is far too small or absent, and if a large anoxic zone like in a sandbed exists, or if denitrification filters (e.g. sulphur filters) are not properly monitored by redox (ORP) electrodes.
As long as there is sufficient current and bioturbation sand beds are safe in my opinion. I have marine tanks (two many years old) almost exclusively filtered by well populated sand beds, but those tanks have power heads of almost 20 times water volume per hour. The ORP in the water is always much too high (little decrease at night) to allow any H2S, and the sand bed critters keep the ORP in the sand between 0 and -150 mV (depending on depth). Almost no nitrates are measurable. However, if all power heads would be turned off, the ORP would drop much faster here, than in a tank with a shallow gravel bed.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
Jase wrote:well then what were the visible bubbles in my substrate? it was a 5 gal with an aerator and ugf filter system, so very low...
Did the water/gas smell really bad, like rotten eggs, then it possibly was H2S.
What I was intending to say regarding bubbles: it can easily reach deadly concentrations without being visible as bubbles. In nature it usually does not occur as bubbles, but dissolved (at least in living lakes without a severe supersaturation).
Other gases may be nitrogen or even oxygen. While all are dissolved in water, they can form bubbles at locally high concentrations, e.g. you often see tiny oxygen bubbles at plants in heavy planted, well fertilized and carbon dioxide injected tanks.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
). They breed very easily and very quickly, and is, as Jase says, very difficult to get rid of if you want to. And if you have a tank full of them, and have to use meds that will kill them, you're into big problems with the water (you'll have a tank full of rotting snails. Ewww!). But they also do a good job with two things: they keep the sand from sinking together, which is good for the plants, and they are good at removing dead fish (or things like that). I've never had MTS in a puffer tank, but I can imagine it can be a problem with the puffer eating them. Snails are snacks for most puffers. And there's also the danger of the shell of MTSs breaking the puffer's teeth. MTS has a shell that is very hard, and that's why this is the snail you should not give your puffers. When it comes to a baby Fahaka, I guess it depends how big the puffer is, whether the MTSs could be dangerous for its teeth (I have absolutely no experience with Fahakas though, so you should listen more to the people who actually has one).
Some call it a product of a mis-spent youth, I call it Rock n Roll ! 
