At least one of the puffers has been a bit off-color, but I gather hes more just moody. Understandably, because he is stuck with another puffer in a 10 gal.
Tony and I decided to go the extra mile and give them a 30 gal. Hes going to move his cichlids into a bigger tank and we are going to setup his previous tank for the puffers. It wont be another week I think, perhaps more. At least the puffers are in good color, nice white bellies, and good appetites. Although the moody one is a bit of a picky eater. Otto likes crickets, we offered them as an experiment, but Herbie doesnt care for them. He ate a snail right away when I put it into the tank though. And they both go for the frozen bloodworms. I do feel badly that we didnt do research on puffers beforehand, finding out later that they need much more space, but its just one of those things. At least we are trying to fix it now. It happens sometimes, you walk into a petstore and see a fish you want, something you dont think youll be able to get again. Almost like a kid in a toystore, really. The puffs fins are healing up really well, but Ive noticed some white speckles so Im taking gentle steps in case it is ich. I know its very possible that they have it, because Tonys cichlids are having an outbreak of it now, and the puffers were in that tank before. They may or may not have been the carriers. Because I read that the ich treatment can burn their skin, Im doing a mild salt treatment. Ive raised the temperature to around 82 degrees (in the past two days). Ive also added 1 tbsp salt per gallon extra. The salinity rose to about 1.007. I was wondering, because I know Ive read it somewhere but Id like a second opinion, how high should I raise the salinity to treat ich? I know its supposed to be gradual. This is my second day of treatment and Ive been doing a 10% water change each day. Ive never done salt treatment before and Id rather not mess up the tank stability I have at the moment. The puffs are acting pretty normal, pretty much as usual, hunting and foraging, eating, and greeting us when we come up to the tank. They like the watersprite I bought, they spend a lot of time napping in it. Its doing great in the water.
They are also now settled into their new home, 30 gallon tank! I added some of those fake mangrove trunks that Pufferpunk suggested, and I need more plants but I have one very happy watersprite and a Java Fern. Ill have to post a picture eventually but I found some cool puka shell substrate that was much cheaper than the cichlid sand Tony uses for his tank, I combined the puka shell (gorgeous shells in that substrate!) from Carribsea with the Florida crushed coral. The puka shell is multicolored because of the shells, so I put that on both ends and put the mangroves in that and spread the white crushed coral in the center. Tony gave me two rocks from his tank and I have them toward the back, I planted the watersprite behind the one mangrove and the Java fern in the top of the other trunk. The puffs love all the space, they zoom up and down and now whenever we come near the tank they swim up to check us out. The puffs are doing great together, they sleep and generally swim together. The only time they show a little agression is during feeding time, naturally. We got them a veggie clip and some wild-caught frozen shrimp and tried it out yesterday... vicious little eaters. haha theyre so cute. They loved it. I cant wait to get some more plants. But they arent glass-surfing anymore. I was worried that they would go crazy because of all the shells in the substrate but they actually ignore them. They know when they are being fed, and they hunt sometimes but I dont see them chomping on shells much... they seem pretty smart. They know what is food and what isnt. (Unlike Tonys dumb cichlids... they were afraid of the shrimp and the veggie clip and I had to dangle it from my fingers to get them to even try tasting it). Well anyway Im proud of my tank, ich is gone and their fins are almost totally healed up now and they have a lot of space, temp is around 81 F and SG is 1.006.