The Puffer Forum

And also for the ebay tip. I should buy my salt that way too, my lfs loved it when I bought a 25kg bucket from him!

thanks for name comment - I think they can be smash and grab artists given the chance, little thugs also

Hi all,

I'm still doing a large water change each day - dectected between 0 and 0.25ppm ammonia, but much closer to 0 than 0.25ppm (API kit, very easy to use) again this evening (lower than a couple of days ago when I had a solid 0.5ppm ammonia) but this time 0.05ppm nitrite (on a Red Sea test kit - more sensitive than the API) also.

I think the tank is going through a mini-cycle due to my basically throwing it together on monday. Puffs still seem happy enough but i know it doesn't take much ammonia or nitrite to burn their gills hence the water changes. Resps look lower than in the shop but I think that might have been an oxygen thing. My tank must be saturated with O2, there's two powerheads and three power filters in there...

I have ammonia remover but have not used it yet, prefering to change water and let the filters catch up.

Dunno if my nitrate kit is detecting properly - have to test it on the pacu tank. It generates poo, so do the puffs. Bonnie and Clyde are full of it! Black though, not white and stringy, which is good. What have I come to, analysing the consistency of fish poo?!

Took some more pics last night - trying to see if any are good enough to post...



I have puffers!

Well analysing your puffer's poo is all part of being a puffer keeper!

As for using the ammonia remover, I would not. The less chemicals you put in your tank, the better, and it's better for it to naturally even itself out anyway. I very rarely, if ever, use anything "extra" in my tank ... with the exception of some little pellets that were supposed to help keep the nitrates down in my Ceylon tank (only because the nitrate comes out of my tap at 40ppm!). I'm not sure it's doing it's job, but it's not hurt either, so I keep adding it every so often.

Hey, I'm very tempted to go back to that shop and buy one of those tiny Ceylon puffers. They were so cute! But I'm sure my husband will bring me back down to earth when he hears I'm eyeing up another puffer!

Thanks schismy007

But at half ten on a fri night?!!! I had just been to a karate grading in my defence...

It was quite interesting how I obtained these two puffers! My wife can be a little 'not more fish' but puts up with me amazingly well. She'd seen them in the shop and there was a lot of 'ooh cute!' and 'you can fill the house with them'. Not the best to say to me! But didn't suggest i bought any. Next day I picked up her and a friend from a concert in the evening and went 'are you in a good mood?' then 'remember those puffers?!'

I'd reserved them

Poor lass stood no chance...

I like your comment on the 'chemicals', quite right and it's also a good idea for me to be reminded that these are scale-less fish who will be sensitive to anything going in.

I'd have to look it up, but I think the ammonia remover just changes it from NH3 (free ammonia) to NH4+ (ammonium ion), it's still there but not as toxic.

I'd looked in my lfs and the local chain store for 'Prime' and neither sold it which is a pity because I would have tried it. SeaChem advertise 'Prime' as being an ammonia remover as well, I saw on the web. What I could get was Interpet's 'Tapsafe' which states that it adds filter bacteria. It's not refridgrated, so I'm stumped for ideas as to how. Didn't say they were live... You do get a lot for the money though.

I'm not sure I want to starve the bacteria of food and I'd have to go through maturation at some level anyway. Hope it settles in a week or two anyway - I don't mind doing the daily water changes, it's only 30 mins a night to do even an 80% change for me with the help of a small pond pump! I make up 40l barrels of dechlorinated tap and pump it in, syphoning out first with either a chunk of hosepipe or a python.

Looking about for the next food source for them, something different - would fishmonger mussels be ok? Maybe cracked with nutcrackers (or drop a dive weight on 'em!) I could get items from the beach as I'm 30 mins away? Could use a tank in the garage as a puffer food cold water marine holding tank but I'm not sure I want to do that as I keep this sort of thing as pets also.

I'd hate it if my water had 40ppm nitrate. Mine's filtered chlorinated water from a lake up in the pennines called 'Cow Green' i think. 3 deg combined carbonate hardness, zero anything else. Probably run straight off of granite hills and been filtered by sphagnum moss on the way to the resovoir. Perfect for discus etc!

RO's probably too expensive to buy and transport for you. You'd need one of those six foot square plastic tanks delivered on a forklift, full of RO!

Ever considered installing one? They're not that bad these days in terms of cost. Or a 'Nitragon', which you can recharge. Bit of a faff, though...

Who the heck am I giving you advice

Best regards,

Andrew

Hi Andrew (Mr Soggy)

It's okay, I'm always willing to take advice from anyone that wants to give it, you never know when someone might have an idea that's better than my own. Yes, we've thought about an RO unit, but I priced them and they aren't cheap, the good ones anyway, then there's putting it in, and then I've heard that it removes things from the water that is necessary .... so would have to have those things added back in. And not only that, but unless we spent alot of money, the affordable ones don't provide enough water for my needs. So I will just keep doing it the old-fashioned way. As for the nitrates ... well I think my fish are dealing with it fairly well, I don't believe that any of my puffers that have died, have died as a result of the high nitrate, and better for it to be high naturally than to climb to a high number from keeping a dirty tank.

And your wife sounds a bit like my husband ... he indulges me, but he also pokes a little fun at how I've turned our house into one big fish-house!!

All the best,
Suzanne

You'd be there all year with a nitrogon

Just thinking, 50% changes on twenty ish tanks. Per week - some must be quite large. I'm thinking of your Mbu, that's a lucky individual to be looked after so well.

I do know what you mean, in my lab (im a chemist and materials science bod by degree but work as a technician in a uni - it's great!) I run a fw still to generate distilled water that I then run through ion exchange resin to remove anything else like silicates. It takes three days to generate 200l or so. A four pot RO unit to produce maybe five times that is going to cost a bit

Lots of marines can survive 60ppm (london tap?), so why not our easturine friends? (hope that's not a flame starter!- I'll apologise if it is). I'm just lucky to have 2ppm or less in my tapwater

If I get off my backside and do some work, I'm sure the pacu tank would give me some nitrates to test. If I get zero, it means the kit isn't working or overwhelmed with nitrates.

If you hear splashing, it's an airbourne pacu. Water change and gravel hoover time! I'm sure full contact boar wrestling is less hazardous than this

Thanks, Suzanne