The Puffer Forum

The day has finally come, I had waited a week and it took me the better part of the last 4 days to get the tank set up, I finally got my Fahaka, he is about 2.5 inches right now, and has a entire 55g all by himself, his 180 has been ordered and will be here by the end of march, but will wait to get it all set up, i figure i have at least 6-8 months to get him switched over.

I set the tank up with 3 inches of sand, live plants, plate rock, driftwood and some fake driftwood, i have an emperor 400 and a top fin 60 on it which turns it over almost 13 times, I took the filter pads from my other 9 freshwater tanks and swished them real good in the tank right before i went to get him and took the extra bio media that i had in seeding in 8 other filters and put that in also, he is one happy fish let me tell ya, here are a few pics.....

ironically i had use some grow over from my other tank and a few snails had hitched a ride, needless to say they did not last very long, i think it took him all of 5 minutes to find the two that where sitting on one of the plants. way to funny,

Fahakas are all the craze Nice puffer very handsome

DOn

Congrats, beautiful Fahaka.

That is not irony..that is inevitability!

thanks, he is a very cool fish, i had spent the last two weeks researching him and decided we wanted to try one, so we put a hold on him at the LFS, he was the only one in his tank, and picked him up today, I had started setting the tank up on this last thursday and finally got it to where i liked it and hopefully he would like it,

like i mentioned though this 55 is just temp, call it a qt period if you want, we will be picking up the 180 on march 3oth, and then hopefully getting it set up by the middle of summer or there abouts, so plenty of time he is max 2.5 inches so even with a good diet and a growth rate of an inch a month, i will have at least 6 months to finish up the 180, this will be the largest tank i have out of the 12, so i want to set it perfect for the long run, I am looking at some serious filters and other things, i even thought of a sump set up..... not sure though yet, more research,

and just for the record, lots of research went into this purchase, not just a oh he is cute lets get him thing......i hate when people do that....anyhoo,

very cool fish so far though, very cool, thanks for the nice comments

Congrats to getting such a wonderful new friend! Since we don't know anything about you or your fishkeeping skills, please don't be insulted by our comments but how did you cycle his tank? Also, I see you have live plants in there with 3" of sand. That sand will have to be stirred every week, to prevent noxious air pockets from forming.

Pufferpunk wrote:
Congrats to getting such a wonderful new friend! Since we don't know anything about you or your fishkeeping skills, please don't be insulted by our comments but how did you cycle his tank? Also, I see you have live plants in there with 3" of sand. That sand will have to be stirred every week, to prevent noxious air pockets from forming.

No insult taken, i have been keeping tanks for over a year now and have many differant species of fish including two types of puffers, 2 GSP's in a 55 with a SG of .014 and a IDP in a 10g by himself..... plus a com planted tank etc......
I know the routine for being new of forums, no prob, no insults taken....

I have nine freshwater tanks and 1 brackish tank, each tank has at least two filters running on them, some of them 3, they have all been running for over a year now with no problems, i do weekly 50% water changes and test bi-weekly and log all my results in my 3 ring binder, each filter has extra bio-media in them, so this morning before i left for green bay, i took 10 filter cartridges and swished them good and then took about a pound of the bio media from my tanks and place them in the extra holders on the emperor 400 and in the top fin 60. Wala instant cycled tank...

Yes i am very aware of the sand having to be stirred once a week to prevent build up of toxic gases, and am not worried about that, it is all part on my normal maintenence......

thanks

LOL, exactly how I cycle a tank!

yeah it is a lot eaiser the more tanks one gets, i was so excited inthe begining when my first tank finished cycling, and then i had an extra filter and ran it on there and then it just kinda kept happening at a pace that my wife really could not comprehend, and here we are today with a 180 on its way on one of the biggest freshwater puffers in the world looking at me type this, funny how it all works out.......

I will do a small bio inthe meet and greet section, i guess i should have done that right away.....

shaner wrote:yeah it is a lot eaiser the more tanks one gets, i was so excited inthe begining when my first tank finished cycling, and then i had an extra filter and ran it on there and then it just kinda kept happening at a pace that my wife really could not comprehend, and here we are today with a 180 on its way on one of the biggest freshwater puffers in the world looking at me type this, funny how it all works out.......

I will do a small bio inthe meet and greet section, i guess i should have done that right away.....

Oh my I know how you feel!!!!
About 2 months ago I had one tank..and then a puffer came into my life..and now I am looking at around 8 tanks + two more doing a fish-less cycle + a snail tank! I have just become obsessed!..I am sure the people on this forum at this point think I am a bit crazy...at this point I check the puffer forum more than I look at my facebook..there is just so much to learn..I am one of those people who just gets obsessed...My husband just thinks I have gone off the deep end...

Good luck with your new puffer!

Shaner -- congrats on your new Fahaka, he's beautiful!

Purplecandle -- don't feel badly about your obsession with puffers, I know all too well what it's like and I see nothing wrong with it at all, even though I've been called down for my obsession, I think it's good. There's so many other things one could get involved in that's not so good - so I see being involved with puffers as a very positive thing. I'm behind you all the way, so don't worry about what people think.

purplecandle wrote:

shaner wrote:yeah it is a lot eaiser the more tanks one gets, i was so excited inthe begining when my first tank finished cycling, and then i had an extra filter and ran it on there and then it just kinda kept happening at a pace that my wife really could not comprehend, and here we are today with a 180 on its way on one of the biggest freshwater puffers in the world looking at me type this, funny how it all works out.......

I will do a small bio inthe meet and greet section, i guess i should have done that right away.....

Oh my I know how you feel!!!!
About 2 months ago I had one tank..and then a puffer came into my life..and now I am looking at around 8 tanks + two more doing a fish-less cycle + a snail tank! I have just become obsessed!..I am sure the people on this forum at this point think I am a bit crazy...at this point I check the puffer forum more than I look at my facebook..there is just so much to learn..I am one of those people who just gets obsessed...My husband just thinks I have gone off the deep end...

Good luck with your new puffer!

LOL the three types of fish that will get you addicted to fish keeping:
Cichlids
Puffers
Datnioides <---awesome fish! just huge PIAs to switch off of frozen food. I have them in with my cichlids

I think i have like 20 fish tanks now...about half of them are 4ft long or bigger (biggest is 7ft long)

yeah it gets crazy some days, I have to switch all of my tank cleaning around now with the 11th and soon to be the 12th normally i do all of them on mondays, that is one of my days off, i might split them into two differant days.

dont get me wrong, love tank day, it is just alot of tanks, like i said it started with one and wam, 10 more later and the 12th on the way.

I know exactly what you mean shaner, I've got 18 tanks myself and have decided that I'm not getting any more than that, but might upgrade some of the ones I have to bigger tanks. I can't do all of mine in one day, even if I wanted to .... I usually end up doing 2-3 each day over a 7-day period.