The Puffer Forum

Just a pointer if you have big fw fish:

You may know that I've set up the second ugliset fish tank on the plant apart from 'the cylinder'? It's a six by four by two foot deep plastic stock tank for my red belly pacu - it's still not eaten the two angels, a syno cat, two plecs and two keyholes that it's lived with for about four years.

Two weeks ago, I decided from the water chemistry readings that the existing pond filter was not enough. So I cut some holes in a 30 by 12 by 20 inch plastic storage box and used that instead.

The indoor 'pond' is 1300l (or 350g in us gallons) and this beast is set up inside on a couple of granite blocks. Water from the tank is fed from a pond pump (500pgh) directly into the bottom of this and goes up through a layer of pond filter foam, two inches of gravel and then through thirty pounds or 15Kg of Alphagrog. I keep the tank heaters in there, also to avoid them being smashed by the pacu. Just a note - if the pump fails and the heaters are still going, they are below the tank water level when the pump back syphons.

My point is this: I'd fed ths pacu quite well for a few days, too well because it refused a hand full of koi pellets and I went off to work. On returning, the stock tank looked a mess with the about the same ammount of pellets drifting around. These were netted out and the water tested.

Amm 0, Ni 0, Na 50.......! Weird thing was pH 6.8 - my target. I would have expected lower.

Alfagrog is amazing. I had an old fluval 404 external and an fluval 3 internal on that tank in tandem because both were mature and came out of the pacu's old tank.

Just amazing, how well this filter works..

Have you tried feeding your Pacu lettuce?

PP told me that the best thing to feed a pacu was lettuce-of course, I thought they liked fish LOL..

So, I told my friend who has a pacu..We gave him a whole spinach leaf and it was gone!!!

Maybe you should try feeding things like that...

The bonus would be..a leaf of lettuce is large enough for you to see..so if he has eaten his fill you could just take the extra lettuce out...instead of hunting around for pellets.

soggydrysuit wrote:Just a pointer if you have big fw fish:

You may know that I've set up the second ugliset fish tank on the plant apart from 'the cylinder'?

LOL!! Yes I think the official vote WAS the ugliest 83.5% voted that the cylinder was the ugliest they have ever seen

Anyway .. you've got to share pics or a quick vid to show us that beast

Actually the nitrate reading was a typo - I'd measured five ppm which is why I was so shocked! Tested other tanks and usually found between 10 and 20ppm nitrate but did find one at 80ppm so sorted that out.

There's a pic in one of my posts here somewhere. I've added a substrate of play pit sand now but the Pacu's dustbin is still in there. Might take a few more but it's still ugly. Only using a max of 300W heating though with pretty much no insulation.

He seems to like entire cabbage leaves And cucumber, though that's pretty much water. Yes, lettuce (not iceburg) would be good. We keep ginuea pigs and a rabbit so it gets some of thier greens... Also give it various pellets and the odd shrimp. Did try nuts but it tends to spit bits out that have blocked the external before now.

Cheers for now

LOL

When I first read this I thought you said Laphroaig( I'm a bit dyslexic).Needless to say it was quite confusing. Although a bit intriguing.

You may know that I've set up the second ugliset fish tank on the plant apart from 'the cylinder'?

I want to see pics of both it cant be that bad...

This one was voted #1
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=22414&st=0&sk=t&sd ... st#p239146

Hi, there's a link here - some pics are down toward the bottom of the thread.

I'll take some more when I get a mo

It's improved: on top of the new filter is a spider plant

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=21937

It may be ugly but there's a pacu in there and the nitrate is only 10ppm after nearly two weeks with no water changes. I'll change a third or a half of the water over the weekend...

haha is that a tub or a tank?

Just add heaters! You really could get in with a snorkel, but I suspect the pacu would go for low earth orbit
I was toying with the idea of adding the two foot blue snakehead who's at the lfs - but no, I quite like the angels and syno etc having some room. Besides, the pacu could easily outgrow this tank .

It's a 1 ton grow out tank

Needs a frame, siding and a decent canopy. It's ugly because I had to get the pacu out of it's tank so I'm sort of bootstrapping the thing. Cosmetics are the last factor right now and that filter really does work.

BTW, I said in the first post - "it's lived with the angels etc for the last four years". I've only had them since last august - the entire lot were rescued. There were two pacus to start but one died when the idiot that had them left them in buckets overnight during 'maintenance' and one pacu died. The rest were given to a work friend of my wife who put them in her six foot discus tank until I agreed to take them on.

Took me three months of persuasion to get the stock vat and another three to build up permission to bring it inside the house. In the end, I just did it!

Ugly, but it's in 'my' part of the house, so hey

The pacu is only about fifteen inches now, was twelve last summer, so definately stunted. We will see if this vat can bring on some growth...

Did a hundred gallon water change last night. Easy, pond pump out to garden, hose through house to refill. One hour

There's some odd tanks in this house - from 360g to 4g. My freshwater pipefish is still here after nearly a year - he's picking at spring cyclops just now in a tank next to me as I type. Makes puffs seem almost normal!

WoW

looks like something i might have. What type species of pipefish ? I understand about unusual fish as i just picked up some Indostomus. Very cool fish.

Here you go, it's a male due to pouch. I've had him since last summer on live food only. He's in a tiny tank, a sixteen by eight by eight inch heated to 25C and filtered by an air powered sponge filter. That way the live food stays in suspension and the small tank means I can get the food density high enough that he doesn't use all his energy chasing them.

It's in soft fw, oddly and may be the only species that can... I've heard all sorts about brackish, but this seems fine in softwater. Go figure

At the time I found him, I tried to introduce two females one after the other after the first died. I put this down to starvation - probably wild caught and not fed much for a few weeks. LFS fed adult brine and I could not get a straight answer if it was enriched or not.

He's lasted the winter on shop bought daphnia but is now being given cyclops, daphnia and all sorts from a water butt I keep specifically for breeding the live food. I should find a way of doing this indoor during the winter.

A case of so far, so good. I'll post the species when I remember what it is - confusion is rife with these. I'm going to be putting my hooks out for more of these, now I know I can keep them alive. Strictly live food only. Only in a species tank, they take days to get through a few bags of daphnia. Imagine a three footer full of them?!

Then I'd like to breed them, of course.

These are old pics, btw, my camera does not like cheap batteries and I've lost the mains adaptor. I'll take some more when I can. The one pic of the 'big and ugly' killed the batts in my camera so I'll have to get some more of a trade name that uses ads including marching bunnies.

ohhh that guy is cool!!