The Puffer Forum

Last night, my puffer tank crashed. I believe it was due to poor quality root tabs (i should have known better)

anyhow. i have been thinking about a QT tank, but i do not have the equipment, nor the funds to set one up at the moment. I am trying to re-cycle that tank as quickly as possible, but i replaced ALL of the substrate (just to be sure)

i've re-housed puff in my 36 gallon bowfront. It is a planted tank, and there are lots of hiding spots, but there are also around 10 school fish in there, and they are quite a bit larger than puff. I do't know if he is gonna hold his own, or terrorize them too much, so i may need to re-home him if it isn't going to be a good scenario until the puff tank is safe again.

i am hoping that, given i have 750+G of bio blocks and the old filter material (wet/dry sump setup) that should be relatively unaffected by the ferts that it will cycle quickly, but i thought i'd stick a feeler out just in case.

Do a 90% WC, cleaning the substrate well & add Tetra's Safestart to the filter. I have recovered several crashed tanks this way.

Pufferpunk wrote:Do a 90% WC, cleaning the substrate well & add Tetra's Safestart to the filter. I have recovered several crashed tanks this way.

because the root tabs disentegrated in the substrate, i had to remove it to be sure that i got all of the chemicals out. I did add api's version of safe start last night. in addition to all of the plants that were growing in there, i put several bunches of chain swords floating, since they seem to be pretty prolific at absorbing nutrients. I am hopeful that in the meantime everything will work out well, since puff is in a tank with a TON of hiding places. he was swimming around last night. even the shrimp lived, so i think i was fast enough.

my wife was really confused when i started reaching in the tank and grabbing shrimp and fish and cupping them in my hands and running to the other tank and tossing them in, though. my 2 year old daughter thought it was hilarious and quite a good time and started running back and forth with me

Specifically what filters do you have on each tank? Can you just move some filter media over from the 36g?

my small puffer tank has a wet/dry sump system. i have mechanical filtration and 750g of bio blocks and a purigen pad.

the larget tank has a fluval 205 canister with 1500g of bio blocks and several stages of mechanical filtration, and a purigen pad.

last night i stopped at the LFS on the way home from work and got a bottle of dr tim's one and only and dumped it into the tank, then aclimated everyone and moved them back. seems to be fine thus far, although puff had a field day with the population of snails in my larger tank, none of them seem to by any worse for the wear. the smallest amano is now milky and i suspect will be moving on to the afterlife soon, but i don't think it is related as the ghost shrimp and other amano are still pretty healthy looking.

i guess i got a little excited and worried for no reason!