The Puffer Forum

I've been lurking around for a little while now anyway. Been patrolling the local pet stores so much that I'm sure they are getting annoyed with me just walking in, browsing and then leaving without buying anything. It's about time I make some solid decisions. I started out quite open minded, with marvellous ideas in my mind of a fully marine tank with coral and cute little clownfish, crabs and sea horses. After research I quickly snapped out of my fantasy into reality. Cost, maintenance, compatibility...too much of a head ache for me. I've decided on freshwater or brackish. Started out with a long list compiled by visiting stores, browing different website to find cool looking, fairly attractive fish. I also ruled out fish that are either way too big (some of those sharks for instance) or way to viscious (oscars, some cichlids). The following is a list of fish I will love to work with. Before I start the list however, I will give some details of my setup.

30 gallons (36x12x18)
24-28 degrees C (75-82 degrees F)
Finer gravel, not quite sand. I forget the actual name of it.
Hornwort, java moss or micro sword will probably be added.

I'd just like some suggestions as to the combinations that would look neat/not kill each other. I do have my own thoughts but I want to see if anyone else is thinking like me. I'm very open to suggestions.

Dragon goby
Leopard Pleco (Leopard Frog Pleco?)
Queen Arabesque Pleco
Rope/Reed fish
Crowntail/Male bettas (can they do brackish?)
Carinotetraodon irrubesco (local store has both males and females)
Figure eight
Rainbow shark
Dalmation Molly
Black Molly/Black Sailfin Molly
Dwarf puffer
Bumble bee goby
Long Fin Leopard/Zebra danio
King Tiger Pleco
Blue Panaque Pleco
Columbian Zebra Pleco
Neon Tetra
Clown Loach

Just looking for some suggestions from the tops of your heads. Not asking everyone to analyze every single fish here and their compatibility with all of the others as some are quite obvious. I have always been a fan of getting multiples of a species and watching them school or group or play around together.

Looking forward to your ideas and comments,

Jared

Welcome to the forum!
The figure 8s you can keep with the mollies, and other slightly brackish gobies.
The irrubesco would be best left alone.
Bettas can't tolerate salt and would get nipped by puffers
I'm pretty sure reedfish eat any fish that can fit in there mouth and will outgrow a 30 gallon.
I wouldn't put a pleco in that tank unless it was a clown, bristlenose or bulldog.
You could get about 10 dwarf puffers, shrimp and otos, with a ton of plants it could look very nice.
Rainbow sharks are apparently fin nippers and aggressive in groups, but otherwise very peacful.


Hoped that helped somewhat with your planning.

I'm sure I sound like an idiot, but what are Otos? I want to see a pic, but I have no idea what to search, haha.

http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_otom.php
There small algae eating cat fish.

Agnate you dont have any puffers? I thought you did...

I had them for 2 days before they died, due to my lack of knowledge about brackish water and that they were kinda sick. That happened about two months ago, though. I'm patiently waiting for my brackish tank to finish it's cycling so I can pick up a happy little F8 puffer (which it's doing quite slowly, unfortunately). I'm also in the process of aquascaping a background for a second 10g, and I'm going to get some DPs.

Oh at least I wasn't totally wrong!

Do you want to keep a puffer in this tank?
That affects the whole thing greatly, since you can't really do a community tank with puffers.

That's half t he battle I'm dealing with. I'd like to keep puffers, but I'd also like to keep a bit of a community. So it's kind of up in the air at the moment which side I lean to. I'm just looking for some rough ideas that I can work with so I can decide if I can do a little of both or have to stick with one or the other.

I guess my ideal tank right now would have two figure eights, a dragon goby or two and a couple clown loaches. Thirty neon tetras wouldn't be that bad either.

I guess the reason for posting this is just to see which of the species I listed can live together in relative harmony.

Thanks for the suggestions and bits of info thus far.

Jared

Can Otos be brackish and live with a GSP?

Nope. GSP's need full marine when they are full grown and I don't think otos can tolerate any salt at all.

So are there any more ideas or suggestions floating around out there? I'd really hate to waste fish and money using the trial and error method. That could be a useless waste of life and finances. On a good note though, I'm getting a 110 gallon tank with a fluval 404.

Jared