Newbie, needs help, direction, everthing :(

[PuffersFTW]

Bare(bear?) with me for a bit here.

First of all I'm relatively new to the whole fish keeping. My sisters fiancee started me off when he got a tropical tank about 6 months ago (he lives with me). Anyway recently he moved on to a new tank and gave me his old one. From that I am looking to move on to buy a bigger tank of my own now.

I am looking to keep it brackish, as right now I have a shark catfish (just a baby) and I know he needs it brackish to marine, so brackish is what I'm going for. It currently is brackish at about 0.004-0.008 (if i have that right) and I would LOVE to have a puffer with him when I get my bigger tank. I tried to keep a figure eight before, and a green spotted but both sadly died - and I'm not sure why. I was feeding them every two days with mussels or brine shrimp, but they both went from fine one day, to dead the next (on seperate occasions)

Basically when I get my new tank I want to give puffers a bit of a go. Im thinking of getting a tank around 200-300litres. It will have 2-3 shark catfish in it, and also some angels. Do you have any suggestions about what kind of puffers? how many? how best to keep them? hell even what my others may have died off =/

Thank you all.

[marksrush]

Hi PuffersFTW, and welcome!

Hard to say what killed your past two puffers. Common causes of death are internal parasites and water not being of the highest quality. Puffers are caught in the wild, and very often carry internal parasites of one sort or another, so if they do carry them and you don't treat for it, that would eventually kill them; as far as the water quality goes, puffers need absolutely clean and pure water, with zero ammonia, zero nitrites, and a nitrate reading of 10 or less - which is accomplished mainly through weekly water changes of 50% or so. (Some people even do a 20% change every day.)

Concerning your new tank, the size you mentioned would be wonderful. But I'm afraid to tell you that, unless your new puffer is tiny (less than 2") he or she will not be a good tank mate - and even then, they can be little killers. My new GSP of 1.75" killed a cory that was still in the tank with him before I'd given away all the freshwater tropicals in that tank, so be warned. One or two young puffers of the same species, with a few exceptions, may be able to be kept together for a while, as long as the tank is large and heavily planted and there's lots of hidey-holes throughout. But once they grow up, they will become more aggressive, less tolerant, and quite probably kill any and all other fish in the tank, so ultimately, they're better off alone.

You mentioned angels, also, as possible tank mates. First of all, your puffer needs brackish water and angels will not like that at all. Not sure about your shark catfishs' needs, but again your puffer is better off alone because even if it weren't for the different water needs, your angelfish and cats would sooner or later end up with missing fins or tails or worse, as I said above.

Recommended puffers: I of course have to recommend GSPs, because I have one and love him. They're so cute, but then so are F8s, and for that matter, most all other puffers. Not sure what others would say, but they'd probably be good ones to start out with. You could of course decide to go full marine, and get a porcupine puffer or other salt water puffer, or there are purely freshwater species as well. But you said you'd like to have a brackish tank, so I would recommend either an F8 or a GSP.

Keep in mind that, unless you're very lucky, your LFS will probably have their brackish puffers in fresh water, which means that they will need to go into a freshwater tank at your house. Since you're starting a new tank anyway, this would be fine for you because you could start out with fresh water and slowly over a period of weeks build up the salt content to where the puffers like it. When you get ready to buy your new setup, let us know and we'll give you whatever advice you need.

[Pufferpunk]

Since those catfish can grow to 18", you need to go bigger on tank size for a school of them.

[riggers]

Hearing that those catfish can grow to 18" sounds like they are probably not great contenders to be puffer tankmates.

Other reasons that your puffers could have died is that GSPs are aggressive and they are bigger than F8s so they could have gotten into a fight and ended up killing each other. Or, it could have been the water, as these two fish have completely different salinity requirements. GSPs are high-end brackish, transferring to marine as they get older, but F8s are low-end for their whole lives. But unfortunately these things happen, so just make sure you research your fish loads before buying and you can't go wrong!

[Pufferpunk]

I'd be curious about the water/tank upkeep of the puffers that died. Were their tanks cycled before adding them? Water change schedule, testing?