The Puffer Forum

In two months or so the 140L/32 gallon tank I bought as summer storage for my fish will be moving from my parents house to my apartment, and as the fish move back to their regular tank this one will be empty. So I decided to start a GSP tank. What I'd like to do is to bring it up to the right salinity before I get the puffer, mostly because I'm afraid to mess anything up. But if I do this all my bacteria will die and the tank will start cycling again, right? Will it be okay to bring up the salinity, cycle it again and then plop the puffer in? I've also read that they thrive in marine tanks, so I got the idea of bringing up the salinity to marine levels. Since I come from FW I don't have a protein skimmer, RO filter or even a sump. The filter is a Fluval 304 canister that's rated for a 70gal tank with a 260gal/h flow. Can I do okay with this or do I need a skimmer/RO/etc.? I only plan to have the puffer in the tank, if that changes anything.

Hmm, this became more of a marine tank thread than a GSp thread. Sorry for that...

If you go marine you can cycle it with live rock. Your best bet is to find out what sg your fish shop will keep them at and set the tank at that level, then raise the sg at 0.002 max per week until you hit your desired sg.

bertie 83 wrote:If you go marine you can cycle it with live rock. Your best bet is to find out what sg your fish shop will keep them at and set the tank at that level, then raise the sg at 0.002 max per week until you hit your desired sg.

I'm 99% sure they keep them in freshwater, since they don't advertise them as brackish fish and only keep freshwater fish in the other tanks.

IMHO, that tank is too small for FOWLR for a GSP. There will be insufficient swimming space and water volume such that the fish will be stunted and water quality will suffer.

Agree with all the above. Cycle as FW & then slowly raise the SG. That tank is better for F8s, IMO. Or just stick with high-end BW for the GSP.

RTR wrote:IMHO, that tank is too small for FOWLR for a GSP. There will be insufficient swimming space and water volume such that the fish will be stunted and water quality will suffer.

To be honest I had some doubts about this too, thanks for warning me. Are there brackish plants I can use for decoration, or how do you guys do it? And pufferpunk: I don't know if it makes a difference but the tank was apparently homebuilt, so the measurements are a bit unusual at around 90cm width, 45cm depth and 35cm height. Unless you were talking about the total volume, of course.

That's 36 usg by my calculations. Could you add a sump to it? If you could you could go fowlr as you could stuff the sump full of l/r. I think you will be out of luck finding many high end brackish plants I'm afraid.

Hey, you're right! I must have messed up my calculations somewhere. The tank doesn't have a sump and isn't prepared for one, but I have a 47l/12.4usg tank I could use as over and make some kind of overflow myself. The thing is, it's also homemade and is pretty high for its size, so there's not as much bottom area as I'd like there to be. It's in my apartment in another town right now, so I can't get the exact measurements. Would this do or is it too small?