The Puffer Forum

Why is it that so many web sites say that all puffers are either marine or brakish except for the dwarf puffer? And I have a 15 gallon tank that I am considering either putting in a couple of dwarf puffers or one sap. Any recommendations? I have never had either. I have only ever had f8's and gsp's.

My dwarfs bit marks on my SAP. It is not recommended to mix most puffer species. As far as your Q, there are many, many FW puffers: ug.php/v/PufferPedia/Freshwater/

Ive got a large freshwater tank with dps and other fish in there - including a sap - i had a few others but they died of Ips during treatment - bugger -

There are a LOT of puffer species out there.

I think most stores say they are "all" brackish simply because the species you usually see in the store are either Figure 8 or green spotted.. both of which ARE brackish (different levels of brackish, but brackish).

There's a ton of freshwater species, and a ton of full marine/saltwater species, and actually, very few true brackish species in comparison.. so its actually kind of backwards.

But I think the stores just don't know that there are so many species out there.. they are jsut used to seeing those two types.

I don't want to mix dwarf puffers and sap's. I want to either get 1 sap or 3 dwarf puffers. Am not sure which one to get. The sap sounds very demanding with its need for high snail intake.

SAPs also shouldn't be kept as singletons. Your best bet would probably be the dwarf puffers.

ok. I read that dwarf puffers also eat shrimp. What kind of a snail do you feed a one inch puffer?

You can feed pond or ramshorn snails, both are common pest snails and many find them easily from other hobbyists or pet stores. The general rule is to feed snails which are about the size of the puffers eye

I wouldn't worry too much about snails for DPs. They rarely have dentistry problems.

What is the general rule of thumb for cycling a tank for puffers? Like how long. I just set the tank up yesterday and I put one of my kids bettas in there just temp. to speed the process up.

There are two forms of cycling with fish or without. Generally if the fishless cycle is your best bet especially if you have the time and patience. A fish in cycle requires alot more care as you need to keep careful eyes on ammonia and nitrites as you dont want to harm the fish (especially with ammonia poisoning or burns). If you or a friend that you trust have other tanks you can take some mature media from the filter to add and speed up the process. If you have enough media, you can essentially clone and have a pretty much cycled tank from the get go (perhaps with a small mini cycle). What type of cycle were you planning and have you access to mature media?

A 15g would be perfect or 3 perhaps 4 (though ideally 3) dwarf puffers. From what I have read a single SAP would not do well on its own and as you have highlighted dentistry problems. So options depending how available to you are:
1 F8 (though you have had before)
3-4 dwarf puffers (ideal!)
Just possibly a lone red eyed puffer. Ideally 20g but proper filtration and plantage might work (though others may disagree).

Please take that betta out of there! There is absolutely no reason to cycle a tank with a fish, causing it to suffer through the ammonia/nitrite cycle, possible causing it permanent harm! Fishless cycling is must faster, harmless to life & you can fully stock the tank when it's done.

Read the 1st 4 articles here: library/category/water-filtration/

Do inverts count for cycling? because i had been using the tank for breeding snails for a while. I am uunder the impression that they don't.

Anything that produces ammonia "counts," but it's preferable to use something that's not alive.

Another big reason to take that betta out: bettas produce very small bioloads, not enough to cycle a tank for DPs. They have stomachs the size of their eyeballs, and they only need to fill it once a day. My DP eats three times that, or more!

well the reason I was asking if inverts count is that i had been using that tank for breeding snails. I also took 2 plants out of my 30gallon, i have been told that helps.