The Puffer Forum

bertie 83 wrote:Please bear in mind properly cared for aquarium fish long outlive their wild relatives. I have 21 +\- year old goldfish, neons around the 10+ year mark and danios of around the same age who still swim like youngsters. It is certainly possible anyway

ITA my first dither fish, black tetras, lived with us for 6 years before I passed them on to a friend who kept them for anothe couple of years..

E78704 wrote:Can you show me some photos of a 30"+ Mbu? Or an Mbu which is 20 years old? I am talking verifiable proof, not just numbers tossed around on the internet.

Regarding the water changes, I'm not disagreeing with the fact that fish benefit from and should have as clean water as possible. I change mine frequently and reccommend it, too. What I am taking issue with, again, is the oft-cited Sticky which essentially implies that unless you have some sort of sewage treatment plant-type of filtration system and change the water daily, your Mbu will suffer, because that is simply not true and anyone is welcome to come to my house and see that for themselves, in person.

Back in the late 1990's, Maidenhead Aquatics in Newbury( UK) had a 2 ft mbu in a 10 ft x 3 x3 ...As I didn't work there I don't know how often they changed the water but as one of the staff was one of my puffer-pushers I suspect it had very regular changes..

RTR wrote:When you can keep multiple species of fish alive into their twenties and breed and return far more high-quality fish into the hobby than I have killed, and when you learn to be less negative toward others who offer good and valid suggestions, I will listen to and even respond to you. }

Nice troll-like attitude, you say until you have done it then you don't accept it ?? (yes I can breed guppies, Chichlids, Kribs etc...)

[But in the meantime I classify you as troll who joined this board to try to tear down the well-intended and valid advice offered here by many folks, you know your type]

As you have not substantiated your view with respect to anything other then "believe me I know better".... and i wanna help...

I will consider you the troll who came on this board recently with an agenda to tear down multiple folks efforts and that makes you a troll who does not deserve and have not learned much about fish-keeping or on web courtesy. Personal attacks are not done here. They belong on MFK with you.

underline mine...since I wanted to put your post into context...

obviously you have a feeling about MFK, I beleive many users of our board have MFK accounts including senior moderators... PP ?

Apparently you are are learning the code but the mentor level appears to be a low level ..... and yes I read a lot of you posts already, and when my wife mentioned the "attitudes" on the board I had pre-identified likely characters.

My intent is always to be +ve after collecting 20+ species over 15+ years and we were the go to guys * WRT several different companies of LFS across the UK does not mean we no nothin'.... disimsisive attitudes after breeding live bearers etc... so we re-join the hobby after a 10+ year break...

* we did puffer rescue and re-homing **

Number of posts is a false indentifier of experience...unless you feel that numbers are important.. *** personally I average below 1 post a day on my forums as I choose content over discussion, just my style...

I beleive many users of our board have MFK accounts including senior moderators... PP ?

I visit there as infrequently as possible. Only to help out where I can, if I have the time. I totally stay off any mbu threads, because that is where I see huge mistakes being made & when I offer advice in those, I get rudely attacked.

Pufferpunk wrote:...I totally stay off any mbu threads, because that is where I see huge mistakes being made & when I offer advice in those, I get rudely attacked.

Pufferpunk, with all due respect, how can you possibly be surprised? I say that because you, by your own admission, have never actually kept an Mbu puffer. The posts I have seen you make in that forum, instead of being earnest discussions about the actual husbandry of this species, which is what I think folks are looking to participate in (or at least, what I hope they are...) are basically copy-and-paste links to that one sticky post by RTR, essentially stating that Mbu are impossible to keep by hobbyists, which of course has been proven wrong many times. So, is it really fair to say "I get rudely attacked" when your only contribution is hit-and-run posts, citing one person's dogmatic philosophy? Of course people are going to resent that. Did it occur to you that some of the peope you are talking to might actually have been succesfully keeping Mbu's for some time now?

Furthermore, the whole "I get attacked"-thing is bogus because it was YOU who incited a forum attack from your own side (this forum...) against theirs, in their "Hyporite Mbu" thread. Is this not your quote?...

"...Everybody vote! We'll blow their smaller tank theory out of the water!!!.."

"...Are you registered there? If you are, try refreshing the page..."

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=30261&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#wrap

Does it not seem a little disingenuous to provoke a forum war from a bunch of members who probably, themselves, never kept Mbu, either, and then say you are mistreated despite your "benevolent efforts"? Sorry, just calling it like it is. Please feel free to correct me if any of the above facts are wrong.

For the record, I have no motivation to attack this site or MFK. We are getting back into serious puffer keeping after giving up our healthy collection after emigration in 2000. At that time the board forums were not as active as they are now. We started on Bulletin boards and dial up's on local boards late 1980's (so I am well aware of trollish behaviour and ettiquette) but the specialization was not there. Until around the late nineties there was little information and you had stuff like fishbase and original texts (academic references etc..) with limited availablity to the hobbiest. Forums such as this are a major step forward as long as sevility is kept and you do not expect everything you read on the internet to be "Gospel".

E78704, I really feel you have only come to my forum to be combative & argumentative. Maybe RTR hasn't kept a mbu for 20 years but I'd believe his scientific background & many, many years of experience in the fish & pufferkeeping hobby over someone just coming here to cause problems on MY forum. Nothing by you or anyone else posting in this thread has debunked what RTR has said, unless there is some proof a Mbu will happily live into their upper, teens kept in this manner.

Pufferpunk wrote:E78704, I really feel you have only come to my forum to be combative & argumentative. Maybe RTR hasn't kept a mbu for 20 years but I'd believe his scientific background & many, many years of experience in the fish & pufferkeeping hobby over someone just coming here to cause problems on MY forum. Nothing by you or anyone else posting in this thread has debunked what RTR has said, unless there is some proof a Mbu will happily live into their upper, teens kept in this manner.

Standing by a statement of fact is "causing problems'? It's certainly your prerogative to feel however you like and I have no interest in telling you (or any person, for that matter...) how they ought to feel and who you want to believe is also certainly your choice but if we're talking about facts, I, in fact, have living proof, debunking the whole 1,000-gallon thing, swimming around down in my living room right now. And have for the last three years. No "power bills that could put someone through college". No overly complicated filtration or heating system. No stunted fish. Just one healthy Mbu puffer.

Was it not you, Pufferpunk, who, before any of this, came into my Cenote Tanganyika thread on that other forum and started into it with THREE DIFFERENT POSTS?...

-"...you're really going to be sorry...Really sorry..."
-"...It's only a matter of time..."
-...Heed my warning--or not..."

Again, please correct me if any of those are not your own actual statements. So, you tell me what is worse? A person standing by their own statements, which are based on firsthand, verifiable experiences, or a person running around, trying to poison other people's pots with disparaging remarks, telling them they are doomed to fail? Remember, you came into my thread on that other forum and made those remarks before I had any idea who you were or that this forum existed. I just joined to share my experiences, just like here. Well, guess what: My fish hasn't jumped out yet. Nor is it stunted. Nor is the water quality intolerable. To the contrary, I just notied a fresh batch of Neolamprologus fry last night and also saw the Celebes Rainbowfish spawning again, as well. Sorry to disappoint you but everything appears fine.

There may indeed be someone trying to be negative about things in regard to this topic but I can assure you that person is not me. Like always, I am happy to share what has and has not worked for me with anyone, any time. Please: Ask away. Hopefully, my experiences help someone's Mbu do better for them. Just my 2-cents as always.

3 years is not 20+ tho, we shall see how this goes. I foresee spine/ tail damage in the future, I could be wrong. My fahaka tank is 150 usg, this is not big enough in my eyes for him so have planned for larger. A fahaka max out at appr 18" so just over half the length of a mbu and prob half the mass. Only my thoughts.

3 years, are you joking???

bertie 83 wrote:3 years is not 20+ tho, we shall see how this goes. I foresee spine/ tail damage in the future, I could be wrong. My fahaka tank is 150 usg, this is not big enough in my eyes for him so have planned for larger. A fahaka max out at appr 18" so just over half the length of a mbu and prob half the mass. Only my thoughts.

That is absolutely true: 3 years is not 20 years. The issue I have is that the whole "You'll be sorry"-thing implies that you HAVE had one for 20 years and as we all know, nobody here can say that. It would be a different story if the person doing the talking had actually owned one for that many years but time but time and time again, it's that closed-door, dogmatic philosophy in the Sticky post, here, that gets touted like it's gospel. How can people be expected to to accept one (failed, at that...) experiment as the end-all statement on Mbu keeping? Yet, that's way it gets handled on this forum, unfortunately.

Getting back to your original question, if I ever felt like our Mbu was truly outgrowing his tank, I would probaby just buy a bigger tank. But that hasn't happened yet and based on his growth rate, I don't see it happening for quite some time.

Just my 2-cents as always.

Pufferpunk wrote:3 years, are you joking???

No.

I have many fish here that are 20+ years old & my fahaka is 12.

Pufferpunk wrote:I have many fish here that are 20+ years old & my fahaka is 12.

OK?

This thread is going round & round & ending nowhere. I am tired of the argument.