The Puffer Forum

My friend is buying the 26 gallon from me and is interested in puffers but would also like some color since she has two young children. I thought that maybe she could get a few dwarf puffers and some compatible community fish to give the tank some color. Are there any community fish that are compatible with dwarves? I don't know much about dwarf puffers and all I can find is that they can sometimes be kept with otos and shrimp, but that's it. Does it just depend on the individual puffers?

Any suggestions would be great because we are trying to get the tank ready by next week because it is actually her son's x'mas present. She is going to have live plants and artificial driftwood for decor. Do dwarves need a buffering substrate like aragonite or will anything work?

I have kept puffs with plecos, the occasional shrimp (ghost, ammano, & cherry), ottos, corries, desert gobies, and the once with a trio of cherry barbs.

Dwarfs don't need any buffers in their water. As long as the PH is neutralish (6.8-7.5) and Amm, Nitrate, Nitrite are 0 your fine and good to go.

Dwarf puffers are hard water high pH fish. Their native water is pH 7.5-8.3*. They neither need nor want neutral water. They do like plant jungles with well broken sight lines - each one wants/needs to be be able to refuge completely out of sight of all others.

DPs are not community fish. The tend to co-exist well with Otocinclus cats, and some but not all will co-exist with larger shrimp such as Amanos and Ghost Shrimp.

I would never suggest colorful community fish with any puffer, including DPs, especially for someone not experienced at tank management. That is a bad idea IMHO & IME. If they want color, keep schoolers (Tetras, Barbs, Rasboras), not puffers.

* http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/species ... vancoricus

barbs are definatly a bad thing. I had some barbs and dps together and that didn't work out.