The Puffer Forum

Saps prefer groups of 3 or more, they love dense plants and swim constantly, they are relentless. They also have the fastest growing teeth so even on a high crunch diet you will need to perform dentistry by hand. They need a long tank to exercise and high flow

SAPs (South American Puffers) are easy with proper feeding, and semi-schooling - that means they are most comfortable with multiples of their own kind in the tank, but they are not Rasboras or Danios - they rarely school tightly. They do need other SAPs in sight. It gives them security. Their tank should be planted moderately heavily (real is best, artificial will do). In a 75 (my best SAP tank) I planted a "spine of dense leafy plants down the center of the tank, leaving all 4 glass walls clear, with filter returns in the front and back corners wit outputs parallel to the long sides of the tank. That sets up a circular current for fast swimming all around the tank perimeter, with plants down the middle for searching through for snails. The bulk if the day's snails went in during the dark cycle, so that the snails could disperse through the plants for individual snail-searching during the light cycle. For me their diet was always >95% home-reared snails (ramshorn and/or common pond snails) to keep their incisor plates worn down. If you cannot or do not feed basically a snail diet, dentistry will be required. 4-5 SAPs and 3-4 Otocinclus cats were the stock. It was a very good tank, always some activity. A few ghost shrimp lived in the veggie filter - these days I would use red cherry shrimp there and harvest some periodically to add to the display as more SAP food.

HTH

I used a 40 gallon veggie filter on reversed light cycle under the display to burn more nitrate and keep the oxygen levels up 24/7, but was not really necessary or critical. External canisters provided biofiltration to the display, internal canisters provided mechanical filtration to the veggie filter. A prefiltered Eheim hobby pump lifted water to the display. A constant level siphon provided water to the veggie filter. 50% partials were done weekly; mechanical filters rinsed weekly; bioflters back-flushed monthly.

Thanks for all the responses. I may have to rethink my plan. :/ I'm planning on dedicating my 125 gallon as a brackish crab tank. Would I be able to keep f8s with crabs? I know gsps will eat crabs, so that's not going to happen. What would you say would be the minimum tank size for f8s? I believe I have a 20 gallon somewhere. Why, when I have an excellent plan of action and everything is almost completely planned out, do things have to start getting complicated? Anyways, thanks again for the helpful, quick responses from all of you!

15g per f8, I would not house them with crabs. If the puffer doesn't get the crab the crabs may get the puffer