Figure 8s

[kirkp]

If I were going to try to breed figure 8's what would be the best setup? Should I try to get like 4 of them and hope that there are a male and female in there somewhere? or would it be better to just get 2 and have a lower chance of a male female, but maybe higher chance of them breeding if I did get a male and female? I will try to get a variety of things in the tank, plants, rocks, mopani wood and hopefully some slate(although I am not sure where to find this).

http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/vie ... =40&t=1397

From RTR's post I am thinking that a few BBG's might be a good idea? or would another fish be better.

http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/vie ... =40&t=7176

I was planning on building some moonlights into the tank, would it be worth while to make it use dim lights, a lot of them and then control how many turned on at a time and try to simulate the moon cycles?

I read somewhere (but can't remember where now) two things:

1) That laid their eggs in FW (which makes sense if they are usually caught in FW) so that a sudden drop to FW might help. Does anyone know if this might help? I was thinking I could have the drop to freshwater coincide with the "new moon" or "full moon". And what effect this might have on plants in the tank? I know you have to slowly raise plants up in SG, would a sudden drop kill them?

2)That Figure 8's had been bred in aquariums but it had never had proper documentation. What exactly would proper documentation involve? I have liquid test kits for ammonia, nitrate, pH, KH, GH, and phosphate.

Thank you for any help you can provide

[crazedpuffer]

I think proper documentation would be an almost day by day journal involving perams, changes in tank, behavior all that fun stuff.
You'd probablly need like 6 F8's though to make sure you have at least 1 boy and 1 girl. Also having a slightly larger than reccomended tank would be a very wise choice

[Nick]

I really think breeding attempts should use no tankmates at all. Especially not bb gobies, they breed readily when well cared for and will give you false hopes of success. I've heard of a couple accounts of them breeding, but once it was just eggs that were found and nobody was sure 100% from where, and another the "fry" turned out to be baby shrimp. I also doubt that dropping the SG on them will induce breeding, they're a totally FW fish in the wild, so I don't see why a changing SG would induce the behavior, it's more a possibility with GSP, which go all the way from full FW to full marine at their own leisure as adults. I'd also provide a big variety of possible breeding locations, flat slate like certain other FW puffers use(suvatti) would be a good idea, low, broad leafed plants is another good one, one rock cave, and one crook of driftwood that works like a cave would be a good start to covering all the possible egg locations a puffer might choose.