The Puffer Forum

I'm not sure the thinking of "how many fish can I cram into one tank" is the right thinking.

I understand you don't want to be over stocked, but you want to maintain a peaceful enjoyable environment. maybe 1/3rd your stocking ideas just to be on the safe side and to make things more manageable for yourself?

Most stores do not sell ramshorns and pond snails because they are considered nuisance snails..

You can order them online from aquabid.com (keyword ramshorn)...

they will breed and grow faster so that you can have a good stock and supply.

Mystery snails are perfect for puffer's teeth. It is the Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS) with the hard shells:
library/feeding/basic-snail-breeding/

I agree w/purplecandle . Mystery snails are not small puffer food, nor practical even for mid to large puffers. I would return them to the store. It takes a lot of space and food to rear mystery snails, and they are s_l_o_w. and demanding on water parameters. They also have separate sexes - do you know how many males vs females you have?

Sorry, I meant baby mystery snails make great food. Also, in a 55g, I'd rather have 2-3 F8s, & some BW tank mates, like a dragon goby, pair of knight gobies, millies, or chromides.

I don't want to max out my tank on fish, I just want them to be happy. Thant's why I'm getting everything set before I get them. My tank is cycling as I type. I hear so many conflicting ideas about how many fish, that's why I ask. The people at the LPS say 1 inch of fish per gallon but I'm not dumb enough to listen to them. I've kept fish before so I'm not totally ignorant. I'm sure you can keep mpore than one 3inch fish in a 55gal. I also don't want so many puffers that they just kill each other.

I'm right now thinking f8's and bumblebees. Pufferpunk mentioned Chromides but how would they do with the other two? I would assume not a problem for the bumbleebee's but what about the puffers? I don't know a whole lot about Chromides but I would worry about fin nipping.

My F8s ate every one of my BBGs. I have successfully kept all the others together, long-term.

Pufferpunk wrote:My F8s ate every one of my BBGs. I have successfully kept all the others together, long-term.

I got 2 BBG in my F8 tank, so far so good

I am not very big on mixed tanks (that is no shock to folks who have known me for some time). I have kept F-8s with bb gobies for many months, but not years. The bbs are great scavengers for the messy F-8s. The gobies even bred in that mixed tank, but fry survival was poor. The Chromides are only aggressive at spawning, and I suspect would not be a big issue, especially if there were no good spawning sites for the Chromides. But I still prefer the fish in their own tanks. All three of those fish will do fine long-term at the same low specific gravity levels (1.003 +/- for me), even with aragonite substrate for better alkalinity support.

HTH