The Puffer Forum

Youv all been extremely helpfull , thankyou kindly for your wisdom!

I just tested my tank and its already cycled so all I have to do now is slowely add salt and do the fishless cycle thing.
About those water changes... Instead of doing a weekly 50% water change, could I instead do a 25% water change twice a week?

Sure, it'd be a little more work though. Just be careful not to increase your SG by more than .002 per week.

I see I see. interesting....

Alrighty, I was just thinking, I have a huge water onion and a few moss balls, how are those likely to hold up in brackish water?

The moss balls, and please correct me if I'm wrong, do Ok in brackish water but don't thrive. The water Onion, no clue....

java moss does alright at low SG, but I've never heard of water onion...

I gave away my F8 because he wasn't nice to a ceylon puffer I had. But I have good success keeping my GSPs with other fish.

Other than the puffers my favorite has to be the archer fish, the lfs I bought him from claimed nothing they did would get him to squirt, after he settled into his tank he has been doing it for me whenever I hold food over the tank for him.


Mollies are great if you have a algae problem but are not a fish I enjoy much.


I do not recommend dragon gobies to anyone keeping puffers, Mine did fine for months till I woke up one mourning to find my puffers trying to eat him, he now has a tank of his own and has re-grown all of his fins.


The golden wonder killifish and top minnow have done great in my tank, the top minnows don't really have a territory but the Killifish is a top dweller.



Guppies are inexpensive and if kept in a tank alone 2 of them can easily turn into 100s. I have had luck keeping them, most are eaten by either the archer or the killifish but the puffers have chased them when introducing them to the tank. I no longer recommend wild guppies because the females can be aggressive to other guppies.


I do not recommend channel cats, they behave much like the dragon gobies which is probably why they also get attacked.



Next on my list of fish to try is blue leg hermit crabs.

^^^^^^ You keep your archer with your puffers? Do they fight?

Channel cats aren't brackish though... and they aren't innocent. At least mines not, it's evil.

TobiasRieper wrote:^^^^^^ You keep your archer with your puffers? Do they fight?

No, no fighting, the Archer is a peaceful fish and only eats fish that fit in its mouth, that's why people don't recommend mixing them with BBGs. Puffers usualy leave them alone.

With that large of a tank, I see no reason why you couldn't have 3 or so F8s, 30 or so bbgs, maybe some knight gobies, a couple violet/dragon gobies, and some mollies.

I've got a 44g with 1 F8, 8 bbgs, and 3 female adult mollies and 20 or so babies. They all get along really well, and I've had no problems at all. The mollies and bbgs eat at least some of the baby mollies (actually only saw the bbgs going after the fry), and I removed the male so I don't have to deal with yet more babies in the future. The mollies will take over the tank, but then again you could just get all males or all females. If you get all females, there probably would be a few months of births, but the gobies, etc will probably eat most of them and you won't have to worry too much.

I would make sure that you break up the line of sight and provide lots of hiding spots and decor. This will alleviate boredom and also prevent aggression (if they can't see each other, they can go after each other!) between each type of fish. Also, lots of caves and such for the gobies.

Ok, done rambling now.