The Puffer Forum

Ok, so i read the article about SAPs in the library and have been researching them on the internet to find out more about them. the store near me jut told me that they are getting a shipment of them sometime in the near future and they interested me. i read they are indeed very peaceful and the guys at the store confirmed it (they have always been right other than the advice about using stress zyme to cycle a tank) and was wondering what experiences all of you have had. i'm also wondering if you all think one could live happily in my tank. its tank mates would include a pleco, a female betta, and a hillstream loach (a couple of mollies temporarily until i can bring them to the store to be adopted). its a 20 gallong freshwater tank thats been cycled for about 5.5-6 years and has 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 20 nitrates, and a pH of 7.2. i could get plenty of snails for the little guy to eat, will be adding much more as far as plants go (once i can cash my paycheck) and plan on getting frozen blood worms for both the SAP (if i get it) and my figure 8 that will be up stairs in my bed room. i just want to know what experiences all of you have had to know what they are like in real life verses just what the articles say they are like. thanks.

I wouldn't reccomend having a female betta just because both bettas and SAP's may be fairly tolerant, if one of themstarted a quarrel, you would never see the end of it. As for the Mollies, they would compete for food, and mollies are faster, and would leave your puff hungry. Plecos, I personally think shouldn't be in any tank smaller than 50gal. if not more. I dunno about hillstream loaches, but I know I want a few.

In a 20 gal, I wouldn't reccomaend more than 1 puff, 2 if you can keep up a lot of water changes.

ok, well the mollies will be out of the tank soon (possibly before getting the puffer, i just have to wait until they are big enough to eat flake food), and the pleco is in there becuase i got him before i knew anything about them when i was about 12 and the store told me to get one becuase my tank was over run with algae, and i'm working on getting a larger tank for him soon. thanks for the info so far. any more info from anyone would be great.

SAP's teeth grow amazingly fast, even being fed a consistant diet of snails, mussles, clams w/e, you will be bound to have to trim their teeth sometime from what I've been hearing.

I'm getting my two SAP's when I get back to town here in the next week or two :]

i know about the teeth, and i'm prepared to do trimming, i researched how to trim them and even found a video of people trimming SAP's teeth on youtube. good luck on getting yours. hope they do well.

I havn't been able to find a video, so thats good, can you put the link on here?

here's the link to the video of a couple doing dental work on a SAP. there's a link to the instructions on how to perform the work in the more info section of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn4uhBS7 ... re=related

probably the most prone to parasites like white spot (freshwater ich) of all the puffers, I had a couple when I first started and was truly amazed at how fast it took them down, so extra attention to detail with these regarding water parameters and stress levels.

yeah my SAP died from ich before i could even start treatment, he contracted ich out of nowhere, i had to go out of town for two days, when i came back he was dead, no other fish was affected including the dwarf puffers i still have today, that fish was awesome though, never stopped moving

Fast current! They love it