The Puffer Forum

My 5 g is ready so i went to get my new DP. Everything went fine with one very large exception. I went to get 1 dp and somehow ended up with 2.

The girl in my lfs (i say local, it's a bit of a drive) was chatting away telling me about their specials and their new stock and she mentioned they had a bunch of buy 1 get 1 free deals, in retrospect i should have paid more attention. I did tell her i had a 5g and wanted 1 dp, i told her i wasn't bothered if it was male or female and she went to get my fish and i checked out the gsp's. Now i do have an accent and it's pretty strong so i can see where she might have misheard me and thought i said male and female instead of male OR female.

She bagged my fish and i stood by the till waiting to pay. She put the fish bag into another bag and i paid the price on the front of the tank. Looking back i should have checked or watched her more closely. Once i got in the car i took a peek and saw 2 dp's; a sane person would have gone back into the store and asked for 1 to be removed but 1 of them looked really skinny and i guess my pity for him/her took over. I emailed a friend who is looking for a dp and am waiting for her to get back to me.

I got home whipped out my 20g (that i bought a few weeks ago as a start to a summer reef tank project) filled it, but some bits and bobs and a filter in and acclimated them into that. I know i'm going to get grief that the tank is uncycleded but i thought a larger tank would be better than putting them both in the 5 g, that's just way too small. I plan to do large daily water changes until i get this resolved.

So... i have a bit of a predicament. The best thing would be for my friend to take one of them, but in the event she won't or can't i want to cycle the 20 g and put them both in that (goodbye nano reef tank build). If i put them both in the cycled 5 gallon and did water changes every other day until the 20g was cycled would this be okay? I can use stuff from the cycled tank to kick start the 20g and then just move all the plants and such over and break down the 5 g for use sometime in the future. today it's hood light broke anyway so i'm starting to suspect it might be useless.

I know it's not ideal but it was accidental, in the future i will watch the people getting my fish. I feel stupid that i wasn't paying close attention and let my feeling of pity for the little one get the better of me and i don't want the fishes to suffer for my mistake. If it comes to it i could take one of them back if that would be best, at least skinny has had a good feed now.

They both seem happy, both hunted snails last night, even the little skinny one now has a little belly going on.

The original captive/hobby breeding of DPs used 5 gallon tanks. But is does seem to shorten their lives - back then (not really that long ago) we thought that their lifespan was no more than 2 years. We have learned a lot pretty quickly.

I would put them short-term into the cycled 5 and set a 15 (or the 20) for them as soon as practical and then upgrade to either of those as permanent home.

HTH

Great. I'll move them over to the 5 g when i get home and get the 20g cycling. I'm glad it it won't do them much harm for a few weeks to be in a 5 g, i'll just up my water changes and get them in the 20 g as son as it's ready. i bet they'll love the extra space.

I have to disagree with RTR on this. In a 20g, the waste will be so highly diluted with these 2 tiny fish, I do not believe it would be a problem. If you have it available, you can add Tetra's Safestart to the filter to boost the bacteria.

So you're basically saying just leave them where they are and build the tank around them?

If i was going to do that i could just move the filter media and all the stuff inside the 5 g cycled tank over to the 20g to add bacteria. I've looked in the stores around here for tetra safestart and honestly couldn't find it. Nowhere i looked had any bacteria in a refrigerated environment that i would use, i thought buying off the shelf stuff would be a waste of money as it would likely be dead bacteria, right? or is safestart okay to use off the shelf?

they seem happy enough, both active and hunting. i left them this morning and they were playing in the bubbles made by the airstone i have in the tank. So precious!

Yes, move everything from the 5g over to the 20g. Tetra Safestart is not refrigerated but is live bacteria. I wouldn't use anything else off a shelf though. You can order it online but IMO, you don't really need it.

I can do that. i suppose all the bacteria i need will already be on the plants/driftwood & filter media in the 5g. If my filter media doesn't fit in the new filter can i put the old media in the tank, say in pantyhose to transfer the bacteria until the new filter media gets a bacterial colony?

Thanks.

sounds like a good plan to me

Awesome, i'll be sure to post pics when i have everything up and running. And i really need to try and get clearer pics of the little guys.

I've been watching button & vetted and Im glad I have them in a barebittom tank; I've noticed some black poop and some white poop. Is the white poop a sign of something? I don't know which fish it's from.

Wouldnt using the water in the cycled tank help out with cycling the 20g ???

Im going to use everything I can, probably including some of the water. I think the filter media, plants and driftwood will help.

The water column doesn't hold beneficial bacteria in any significant amount, it clings to surfaces.

The white poop is a sign of IP's and if the one is skinny id suspect that is the one with it. Get some meds, soak your food in it before feeding. Start asap

Which meds should i get? i looked at the petstore (okay petsmart.) and couldn't see nay that dealt with IPs, mostly just with external parasites.

i suspected the skinny one might have some because it was so skinny yesterday, not so much today.