I'm in a bit of a situation.

[Kingsleys]

There is only one puffer in there now. He's happy and his skin looks a lot brighter. Our 2 inch puffer has been sent to my sister's home a few miles away. He seems happy as well. Thank you!

[Kingsleys]

Here's a picture of the tank. Is there anything I should get?

(I know about that two-filter brackish water setup, but we just can't do that.)

[Pufferpunk]

It looks pretty good. What's the substrate? Are those live plants? What's he eating?

[Kingsleys]

We used live sand on the bottom and crushed coral on top of the live sand. I think that may be why the bubbles are there.(protein?). I only use live plants in my aquariums... I think java fern and narrow java? Weekly diet consists of brine shrimp(raised to adulthood and alive), little pest snails from Petco(cleaned,alive, the size of his eye), ghost shrimp(live), bloodworms(frozen), Mysis shrimp(frozen), krill(frozen), and I'm thinking about shrimp tails.

[Pufferpunk]

There is no "live" sand that can live in BW. Expect a lot of die-off ammonia/nitrate from that. Argonite sand is recommended.

[bertie 83]

Now we know where the problem is. Live sand is just a pollutant, dead bacteria and in a b/w or f/w tank it is a recipe for disaster

[hadla]

Sorry, off topic, but I'm confused... So live sand is bad for starting a sw tank, too?

And welcome and nice tank!

[bertie 83]

If you get sand from another reefers mature tank it's good. Out of a bag it's poo, just dead rotting critters etc

[RTR]

+1 to Bertie's comments.

[Pufferpunk]

Plain sand becomes live quickly, when LR is added to the SW system. You can also add a handful of LS from an established tank to seed it with beneficial critters.

[hadla]

Ok thanks, so I'll just take some sand from my 29 for a new tank in the future

Heh so that was a waste for the 29, at least I only bought one bag!

[bertie 83]

Yea scoop some from your established tank, don't waste your money on a bag of ammonia. I have a great source for live rock but get many undesirable critters with it so had to hunt a new source. My new source will allow me to test the tank water on a drop in basis and will tell me where the live rock came from so I can suss what undesirables may be present, my next tank build will utilise 50% of the sand from my current tank and will house a single dogface/porc or a trio of gsp/ Ceylon . So I'm thinking any undesirable crabs ( which seem common in the cheap live rock here in te uk, I have a sump full of fish murderers) will be eaten