The Puffer Forum

Hi guys,

So, I could not control my urges any longer and went to the LFS today to get a GSP. I had a nice 25g tank in storage that I scrubbed, cleaned and cycled with some filter media from my existing 17g DP tank and also lined with crushed coral for substrate. This will not be planted like my DP tank as I intend to convert it to full marine eventually. The LFS maintains their stock of GSPs and F8s in FW settings, so I have been reading up and on how to go from FW - BW - SW slowly. Right now, the little GSP (haven't named it yet) is only about 1" - 1.5" long, so I think that it will do well in the 25g for quite sometime. As usual, I'm treating it with Praziquantel as precaution against IP; one of its tankmates was in an awful condition - black belly, very thin body, horrendously sunken in belly - and I thought that I should just start medicating straightaway and not wait until the symptoms manifest themselves.

I don't intend to begin the conversion process from FW to SW until I'm certain that the tank has already been completely established (at least a month or so) and so far, my new puffer seems to have acclimated to its new home well enough; i.e. no signs of shock, curiously exploring its surroundings, and displaying hearty appetite no more than four hours after introduction to the tank. As with all new tanks, I'm monitoring the water condition closely and will be ready to make PWCs as and when necessary.

As usual, please let me know if I have missed anything, and any advice given will be very much appreciated. =)

Congrats on your new puffer. Keep an eye on that sunken belly incase it's ips

Congrats, make sure you keep an eye on your parameters, the filter media should cycle the new tank fairly well, but again, keep an eye on parameters to make sure. GSPs aren't too picky, so treat it's food with prazi, dosing the water will have little effect. As I recommended before, try soaking a small piece of raw shrimp in prazipro, add garlic to hide the med flavor, let marinate for about 1 hr. My GSP didn't like the flavor of prazi until I covered it up with garlic. Everything else sounds good. When you start raising the salinity, make sure to raise your SG by .002 per week to avoid killing your biofilter.