Hey everyone, I'm finally back and i have just a few questions...
I'm going to order some c.irrubesco puffers and i want a male and female hopefully... is that o.k to have that for a 37 gallon tank, fully filtered and maintained often?
P.S I have yet to find the diet of the puffer itself, and i have checked the articles. Do they have any specific diet I should know about?
I have a male and a female in a 180 litre tank and they mostly get along fine. The male sometimes chases the female, but no harm seems to be done, and she's swimming about at the front as I type this (he's puffing himself trying to scare his reflection for some reason).
Diet... seem pretty adaptable. I'm sure snails are the best thing but mine don't seem wild about them and mostly like bloodworms, a bit of mussel, and the odd prawn. They eat krill when nothing else is available.
In terms of hardiness they seem pretty solid. Within a couple of weeks of being purchased (about 14 months ago) they both came down with some mysterious skin infection. Perhaps slime disease, maybe velvet. Not sure. Anyway, did two dips (20 minutes long, 7 days apart) in seawater and then treated the water with anti-whitespot/fin-rot potion. The dips wiped off the slime within hours, and since treatment the fish have been disease-free.
As far as temperament go, I have found these fish to be very, very mild. I *know* not everyone feels this way about them and that's fine. But they ignore the SAPs except when feeding, when they do sometimes steal from each other (the SAPs usually win). Tetras and glassfish seem to be entirely unnoticed. No sign of nipping catfish, except perhaps Corydoras, but that happened with the SAPs, too. One oddity was that the *female* Pelvicachromis taeniatus took an instant dislike to them and would harrass both of them on sight, chasing and nipping at them. However much "firepower" a pufferfish might seem to have, my experience is that dwarf cichlids totally outgun any other fish of comparable size -- they just have a lot more aggression and single-mindedness per inch.
Mine are in soft, pH 7-ish water (90% rainwater, 10% tapwater).
O.k, Thanks for the help. I'll try to vary the foods as much as possible and I'll try to get my hands on vitamin water..(where should i be able to get this?)
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