The Puffer Forum

OK. I have 2 gsp's in a 75 gal. I am currently converting the water from brackish to marine, slowly, over about 5 or 6 weeks. I am in week 4 at about .017. I have heaps of dry rock, reef saver variety, and some pukani and tonga branch variety's as well. My question is, once full marine, is there ANYTHING that i can keep in there with them that will eat diatoms and hair algae and detritus? I know that snails, hermit crabs, and urchins are apparently out of the question. Maybe, just maybe, since i have tons of highly porous rock and caves throughout the tank, there may be enough places for some of these things to hide, but its doubtfull, since my gsp's pick and comb the rocks all day. What about a fast moving semi aggressive algae eating fish of some sort? Ive read that a fox faced something or other might work. Any suggestions? Anyone have any experience with algae grazing tankmates? I'm looking at you, pufferpunk...

Hi and welcome. Do not raise your salinity by more than 0.002 per week or you will kill off your tanks nitrifying bacteria causing your tank to crash. Sometimes hermits work but its all down to the individual puffers personalities, nothing is truly safe long term

Zeppelin, the bigger one, is absolutely voracious. He will destroy anything that moves, or that he thinks one day might move, or had moved sometime in the past, and then some inanimate stuff too. Dirigible is slightly less aggressive, but follows zeppelins lead. I do have some snails in there, but they only come out at night and it appears that they stay at the bottom so they can quickly bury themselves once the light comes on. Interesting fact, these snails are of a freshwater variety that i have had in my tanks for years. I was feeding them to the puffers when they were in their 20gal hex and i had started converting to salt. I hadnt noticed that some of them had managed to bury in the sand and avoid my puffs. when i took the puffs out to put them in their 75gal, I raised the salinity in the 20gal to full marine to get a good marine fuge tank going. Those snails that had gotten away came to the surface in shock from the new salinity, and half of them died, but the other half lived and are actually reproducing, in the full marine water. Apparently this variety is capable of living in either fresh or salt as long as they are given time to acclimate, but they dont even really need that much time. Everything ive read has said this is impossible, but i'm seeing it here with my own 3 eyes.