The Puffer Forum

OK I have a 10 gallon tank, planted, cycled, ready for fish. (it is recently vacant). I have a snail colony growing strong in another tank to use for food. I have bloodworms. I have other frozen foods as well.

I need some puffer suggestions, and how many of them can go in, I was looking at red-eyes or something that size, and the suggested tank size according to pufferlist.com was 5 gallons, can I put 2 of them into a planted tank? what other puffers are options and how many?

BTW, please note DO NOT suggest Dwarf Puffers, they are out of the question.

Just one red eye for a tank that size. I think two would eventually lead to one killing the other based upon other board member's experiences.

Eric

even a male and female?

Why are dwarves out of the question?

10g/red-eye.

How are you keeping the tank cycled?

10 gallon tank, planted (helps to limit the effect of not cycling a tank), but it also has 3 otos and 5 ghost shrimp in it atm.

The reason that there will be no dwarf puffers. because that is what was in it before.

I have lost 3 in the last 2 weeks. 1 two weeks ago, seemed perfectly healthy woke up one morning and it was stuck in the filter intake. 2 today, they seemed perfectly healthy, ate fine, had nice round tummies after eating, they BOTH got stuck in the power head intake, and it is a very weak powerhead, actually moves 1/2 the water my filter does. One of hte puffers lost today was the last of the first 3 I had ever bought. It was the male, a cute little guy that got sick soon after I got him, very sick, and I managed to keep him alive. I am tired of it, I do not want to lose another one to something like that.

I have one DP left, I have ordered an eclipse 5gallon hex tank to house it in.

Might want to lose the power head then

Was it cycled before you put the dwarfs into it?

I find dwarfs to be pretty hardy really...seems like there must be some sort of problem for you to have lost as many as you have in a relatively short amount of time.

What are you water parameters?

Seems more like they got killed when they went to sleep, just happened to get sucked into the filter while drifting in dream world.

Now that I think about it, this 'technically' was never cycled. It is heavily planted, all nitrogen readings remain near 0 at all times, except immediately after dosing, yes I have to dose nitrogen into my two tanks. :/

Healthy fish do not get stuck to powerhead intakes, Tihsho! Tsk tsk, you should know that by now.
Unless we are talking about cyclone conditions, getting stuck to an intake is a correlation, not a cause.

Jarred, do you monitor KH & pH in these tanks? I imagine if you are dosing ferts than you are also supplementing with CO2. Do you monitor CO2 levels?
If you can describe your setup in detail, it would be helpful.

When you say the male was sick, what were the symptoms?

If there is no screen on the intake, it is possible for a small, healthy fish to get stuck to it or sucked in. Agreed though, if there is a screen, healthy fish should not get stuck.

No, pls don't put two red eyes in a 10G. Especially if it's a male and a female. I've two red-eyes (one male and one female in a 20G), which is pretty heavily planted, and still the male occassionally attacks the female. Thankfully she has areas to hide, and she has learnt to dart around very quickly. I can't imagine if it's a 10G. The weaker one will probably... die?

OK tank setup a medium planted tank (well heavily planted but plants are still growing in) I have not yet taken up to full dosaging yet, it is getting about half dosage. It has the Hagen CO2, I monitor kH and gH with , atm, the crappy cheap test strips until I can get my butt into town, over an hour away to get a better liquid test kit than the one I have right now which does not test for that stuff.

I am not going with red-eyes, I am looking into a pair of blue rams instead.

I am putting the DP into a 5 gallon.....4 tanks in a dorm room ranging from a 1 gallon heated/filtered beta tank to a 29 gallon bichir/angel/African butterfly tank

Pufferpunk wrote:If there is no screen on the intake, it is possible for a small, healthy fish to get stuck to it or sucked in.

Thats what I meant.

But on my first DP setup I had a power head (aqua clear) and the DP's would chase blackworms oup the intake or I would check the tank before bed and I actually saw one (sleeping, tail curled and floating around) get stuck to the grill I had to add on the power head. I decided to take the powerhead out that night.