The Puffer Forum

Most puffers are not piscivores, they eat crustaceans.

Pufferpunk wrote:Most puffers are not piscivores, they eat crustaceans.

yeah i was told by a friend they like fish, he fed his goldfish once a week, but this was quite a while ago.
i only have f8s now and dwarfs. and none are fed fish

so how long could a gsp live in freshwater?

They won't die right away but will only live about 5 years out of the 15+ they can live in BW. They also won't be as healthy (constantly battling/treating for diseases), be as colorful or grow as large as they should in BW.

As far as feeding GF to ANY fish: library/feeding/feeders/

Pufferpunk wrote:They won't die right away but will only live about 5 years out of the 15+ they can live in BW. They also won't be as healthy (constantly battling/treating for diseases), be as colorful or grow as large as they should in BW.

As far as feeding GF to ANY fish: library/feeding/feeders/

yeah i dont feed fish to my fish, just bloodworm, brine and mysis shrimp, cockel,muscle,oyster,and live snails and as a treat river shrimp now and again

but do you know why theyre not as healthy
like what does it do internally to them to make them live shorter, have less color, ect?

I am sorry to be a hard-headed and marginally rude, but if your circumstances mean that you you cannot keep a fish properly, then you do not keep that fish. Fish abuse is fish abuse.

I would love to keep a T. mbu. I know that I could not currently do it right and properly, so I do not have one.

RTR, Could you explain why BW fish need to be kept as such?

The short reply is that they need it in captivity because we have found that they live 3-5 times as long in it as they do in FW, and are healthier during that extended time. The commonest hunterr-predator puffers from BW that we keep are F-8s and GSPs, with Ceylons in smaller numbers. The F-8s do fine in light BW so long as the KH/alkalinity is good. The two larger ones need mid-level or higher brackish water. Because we have much better techniques for full SW than mid-level or higher BW and that higher level does not seem to hurt longevity, it is less operating cost and work to use full SW w/live rock, skimmer and marcoalga refugium all together rather than conventional bacterial biofilters. This is pure pragmatism. For these fish it is known and really does work better, so we do it that way.

They likely physiologic justification is that we have found where on the scale of water conditions the fish's physiology works best (or possibly just where on that scale we can keep them in the best water conditions). This gives us longevity that is far beyond the fish's wild lifespan - the average fish in the wild does not live to sexual maturity (1 1/2 -3+ years for these fish). In captivity, these fish may live 3-5 years in FW with good care. In light BW for F-8s or mid to full SW for the larger two fish they can be expected to live and be healthy for 15-20 years, possibly longer.

In some parts of the world now and everywhere a couple of hundred years ago, human lifespan were a lot shorter than they are now. We have learned a lot about people in the last 200 years. Now we are learning about our pets as well, so that we have the obligation to keep them as well we can if we are going to keep them at all.

HTH

now i have killed my rock off and its in my freshwater tank, if i was to add it one day to a brackish or marine tank would it cause any harm or is it a fact now thats its dead now and thats that and is the same as a pebbel or stone?

nope, you should be fine!

and i know that things got screwed up
and i do have the ability to take care of him properly
and i did
but then stuff went down and i had to switch it up a little
there is no way i wanted to take my little guy out of his own 72g tank *which was full marine*

im not trying to say what i did wasnt good, but i had to do it
and in a couple weeks he'll be back in BW, then back into SW

xmikebrock wrote:nope, you should be fine!

and i know that things got screwed up
and i do have the ability to take care of him properly
and i did
but then stuff went down and i had to switch it up a little
there is no way i wanted to take my little guy out of his own 72g tank *which was full marine*

im not trying to say what i did wasnt good, but i had to do it
and in a couple weeks he'll be back in BW, then back into SW

cool cheers for all the advice

yeah, no problemo man

i gonna wanna see some pictures when you put it in!

xmikebrock wrote:yeah, no problemo man

i gonna wanna see some pictures when you put it in!

its in but my iphone doesnt like my mac and atm and wont add pics, gotta transfer them to the mem card to upload, i will get around to it this week

awesome =)