The Puffer Forum

I wouldn't suggest keeping it in a 5 gallon tank very long, but you can certainly get away with it for a month or so if you do very frequent water changes to keep the water quality good.

Figure 8 puffers do best in low brackish, but if you have very hard water, freshwater may be okay as well (they really need hard water). My concern right now is the ich, increasing the salinity with marine salt would do that little guy a world of good from the ich standpoint. You could get a small box for I think under $10, and just add a few tablespoons...

He is actually doing much much better. His ich is almost completely gone because i have put a little bit of marine salt in there. He is doing very well. He is eating live blackworms, frozen bloodworms, snails, and the occasional ghost shrimp (gut loaded). He gobbles everything i give him and gets a nice white big belly.

My bad, I didn't see the part where he had ich! Poor fella.

Keep up with the water changes and whatnot for the next while. Ich takes several weeks before it is completely gone, so keep an eye on things. Ich also forms in the gills before the rest of the body, so even if it looks gone, there might still be some present.

Yea, but hopefully the ich will be completely gone when he goes into his new 30 gallon brackish home tomorrow! =)

Ich has a life cycle of 4 weeks, and can only be killed by medications/salt when it is in a certain part of the life cycle. So no, your puffer will be taking the parasites to the new tank with him, but the salt will wipe them out eventually. It will just take a good 4 weeks for all of the parasites to move through their life cycle and be exposed to the salt. So no worries, but be sure to really do a good cleaning/sanitizing on that other tank just to be safe. And you may want to make sure you don't share things like nets between the two tanks, just to prevent passing anything back and forth.. at least for the next month or so.

bbstar1122 wrote:I currently have it in a 5 gallon tank for now since i cannot have it in the same tank as my DPs. Would it be okay in a 5 gallon for now? It is only about 1 inch.

If it's only about an inch like you said, it should be fine. I have a f8 and gsp in a 10 gallon tank and they'll definitely need a bigger one but they're doing fine.

whoops... that last comment I wrote was outdated...I hope he had a smooth transition into the 30 gallon

Yea. Hes doing good in his new home. Just got off the phone with the owner and he said the f8 is eating and looking great! =)