The Puffer Forum

Hey how do your properly acclimate new puffers? I know it's not good to dump the water they were shipped in into your tank and i know it's bad to take puffers out of water because if they puff in air it could be deadly so what would be the best way to get them into the tank without any harm?

After acclimating, I pour off most of the water & then pour the puffer into the tank.

To acclimate a new puffer to his new tank, you put him and the water he came in into a 5-gallon bucket (you might want to ask the LFS for a nice big bag of water along with the fish). Then get a length of air hose, and start a siphon from the tank into the bucket, and tie a knot in the hose until you slow down the siphon flow to about a drip per second. Let it do this for a few hours, until there's about 3-4 times as much water in the bucket as there was when you started out. Then like PP says, you can just pour him into the new tank.

If the puffer is realatively small, after using some means of acclimation, you can just put the bag in the water, and let the puffer swim out. I find it nicer than pouring the fish in. However, it is on the larger side, it would probably be easier to pour it in.

You do want to dump out as much of the acclimation water as possible but some of it will be getting into yourr tank with these methods. I have also quickly scooped out with a net & burped if necessary, although I have never had one that needed it.