Just thought id let you know of this little story, quite a while ago i went to a fish shop in a garden centre which was really really nice, marine set up was unreal, everything clean as i'd ever seen. Anyway i presume they have new staff or something as i had not been there for couple of years and i recently moved a short distance from there. So on my day off i thought i'd go and have a look.....oh dear. The tanks were grim......really bad. The marine had mostly been drained out and just left sitting, and the marine that was running wasn't even worth having. Anyways i had a spare tank running and thought id put something in it. I look in the brackish section ( 2 tanks!! ) and there was 3 small f8 puffers.......2 of them was in a terrible state, fins nearly all gone, skinny, black bellys ( you know...the usual bad signs....but all of them!! ) but there was 1 that looked pretty good. He came to the front and looked happy, a bit fatter than the other 2 and i decided that i would give him half a chance. I know that you shouldn't buy ill fish, but chances are the other 2 was going to go and i thought chances are he'll either already have or get what was wrong with them. Anyways one of the workers comes over ( or f***ing pratt as i'd call him ) talking absolute crap. Dropping all these names about puffers and apparently he can get ANY puffer i like, i just have to say the word. So he was telling me how much he knew about puffers and that the one i was buying was a sub-species of figure of eight but would still let me have it for the same money because he couldnt say 100% what type so he was doing me the favor!!???? So i ask......what salinity he was running there tank water at.......to which my answer was.......im not sure we put about a kilo in there as marine is roughly so many kilo per gallon roughly and it didnt need as much!!?? i told him not to worry as i can test his water using refractometers etc.....i dont think he knew what that was....he's so much cleverer than all of us because he can guess how much salt to add unlike the rest of us. Anyways my answer to me testing it was.......I wouldnt worry to much, just throw some in, they like the salt level going up and down quite a bit, its better for them and they'll be much happier!!!
So basically If any guys on here want some puffer advice just let me know and i'll drive down there and ask him what he thinks and we'll all have much healthier happier puffers!!!
And if anyone also wants me to drive down and knock him spark out, that can be arranged to!!!
