The Puffer Forum

I've been doing alot of internet reading in preparation for setting up a 120 gallon tank with a baby porc as the centerpiece. I really can't find any reference to live plants. Besides often being difficult, are they not appropriate for porc puffers? Also, is there any coral I can get away with using? And third, any thoughts about appropriate eels as tankmates? (Are there any eels that have to be bought in pairs, for 'humanitarian' reasons?) Thanks!!!

in regards to the plants ... they are do-able but I don't know if you are up to it in a home environment. Basically, you are looking at Kelp a large form of algae.

In SW set ups your options are very limited in regards to plants.

Submersive / emersive: Kelp, mangrove
Submersive: Seaweed

There may be others but at the moment I can't think of others.

There are all sorts of macro algae you can keep but it can get out of control & many species can go sexual. Myaj kept a bunch of macro in her tank & it looked very nice.

All my macroalgaes died during hypo The only thing on the live rock that seems to have made it is coraline, and perhaps some of my 'pods. I should get a piece of really good live rock from an aged reef sometime to repopulate. I had a beautiful unidentified red one, fern caulerpa and sawblade caulerpa, and I loved how it looked.

why did you hypo your main tank?

I preformed hypo in my main tank but it was a FO tank. I took LR out of the sump beforehand.

lookup 'macro algae'
a lot of corals are ok
but ultimately it depends on the individual puffer you have, and whether they mess with tankmates/corals.
I find putting my finger on the glass and pointing directly at them and then following him around to be a very effective means of conditioning.
Lol, I know people probably think I'm crazy, but I've trained 3 puffers that way and have broken several "bad habits"

I performed hypo in my main tank because the results are the same either way, and this way my fish got to keep their "home" while being treated. If I fallowed the main tank, I'd lose my cycle anyway, and its FOWLR, so no corals to lose. Loosing the macro was unfortunate, but it can be replaced easily enough. The 'pods are reallying, Jilly has been going about her rounds again. It nuked all my green hair algae, which was oogly, so overall a fair trade for the macro.

I was able to bring it down to 1.009 in under 5 days without loosing the cycle, doing it the way I did, check out the thread for it if you're curious how that was done.