The Puffer Forum

What is your reluctance to add substrate? Don't you want him to feel safe?

I'm in the process of getting some color sands and been in contact with an industrial sand supplier. Their hours are my working hours, so its hard to establish a good line of communication.

Here are my options, they will get back to me on Monday.

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Terrance wrote:I'm in the process of getting some color sands and been in contact with an industrial sand supplier. Their hours are my working hours, so its hard to establish a good line of communication.

Here are my options, they will get back to me on Monday.

that's a long time for that little fish to wait for a suitable environment so that he can get on with life
not fair to the fish that it was brought home before preparations were made for it's comfort and well being
the fish was brought home July 26th
it's been in a bare tank for 11 days already
normal feeding & behavior are not likely to happen under the circumstances............

Why don't you get like a big glass casserole dish or plastic something or something, put some rinsed play sand in it so he has at least something to bury himself in.

I cant find the worm in his tank he ate it last night

Now he is chasing the guppy around. Young congos must be really active.

His tank at the LFS also did not have any substrate in it, so he's not in unfamiliar terrain.

Maybe I should mix all that sand in the sample into a bowl for him to bury himself!

When I had my RED Punkster, I used 75% black sand & 25% red gravel. You don't want to lose him (visually) in all red sand but still want him to try to match the substrate.

Pufferpunk wrote:When I had my RED Punkster, I used 75% black sand & 25% red gravel. You don't want to lose him (visually) in all red sand but still want him to try to match the substrate.

I'm just going to try to keep him the same color that I found him, so I'm trying to do the same concept as you: 75% dark substrate 25% light substrate. So I ended up buying dark red fine sand and light peach quartz sand.


Yesterday and today, I put in about 1.5 inch of dark red fine sand. I pulled out all the decor. It was all piled one side of the tank, and my congo would just sit on the empty side of the tank.

Today, I just leveled everything. My Congo is really scared of the dark red and looks stressed now. Its just swimming around up and down the tank glass. I never seen him do this before and its the first time I've seen it stressed . Maybe red looks really scared to him. I left the lights off, so he can get adjusted. I will fill another 0.5 inch of peach quartz size sand once he settles down and starts to bury himself. Or I'll just wait until Friday when I have time to rinse more sand lol.

edit: 2hrs later. He settled down I'll add the peach sand tomorrow.