The Puffer Forum

Hi from the sunny Isle of Wight, the island that seems to be stuck in the 1950's

Microbiologist by degree and profession (Hospital pathology lab)

Proud owner of 'Squaffy' the Figure 8 puffer, currently 9 yrs old, lording it up as a singleton in a 60G tank (Juwel Rio 240 with external eheim filter and an extra wavemaker powerhead) - there were 5 Bumble Bee Goby's also in there a few years ago until they started to vanish, so clean-up crew is myself, my wife and daughter with a net

Stumbled across this forum after searching Google for how old Figure 8's can live - very informative site you have here and it's feeding my MTS (multiple tank syndrome). Also have a Baby Biorb breeding Ramshorn snails, a 30G breeding Red Cherry Shrimps and Guppies (daughter loves Guppies), and an old leaky 100G that's been sat in the garage waiting to be fixed for years which I'm entertaining the idea now of using as a sump for a much bigger tank, until the wife reminds me how much it will cost to set up a massive SW tank... one day...

Wonderful fish-keeper you are! Tell us more about his tank. Is he in BW? What's the hardnness of the water?
I'm bugging our Mentor, RTR, to do a write-up on his F8 keeping. He's gotten them to live 18+ years!

SW is not as hard as you think!

Welcome fellow uk person

Thanks for the welcome

The tank's at SG 1.004, seems happiest there, went to 1.005 and he seemed to get listless, as soon as it was 1.004 again activity increased again. It was really trial and error, keeping a close eye on behaviour.

Plastic fantastic is how Evie refers to the tank, fake plants, fake mangrove roots, fake cave etc., having tried just about everything over the years and given up on live plants. Favourite plants that have stood the test of time (plastic ones) and not been trashed by him are banana lily and madagascan lace, so broad leaf is favoured wheras thin/narrow/spiky is trashed.

Upgraded the T8 light unit to T5 recently, using 'warm glow' tubes rather than 'daylight' ones, they bring out his colours much better and don't startle him when switched on.

Water hardness... I've never actually checked (just ordered a GH + KH test kit, so will update) - the water here is known to be the hardest in the UK, coming from a chalk aquifer under Carisbrooke town, pH is a constant 8.2

We refer to 'him' as a male, although have no idea. Wife says only a man would eat his tank mates, and I daren't point out that women are more than capable also... under the thumb lol... point proven

I'll try and get the camera off Evie at some stage and open a new thread in the Brackish tanks part

F-8s are still one of my favorite puffers. For me they do best in light brackish water (specific gravity 1.003-1.005) with a diet that is mostly home-reared snails (75-90%), with other foods as treats. I used aragonite substrates to maintain high alkalinity. I do 50% water changes weekly. All of my tanks are and were basically species tanks. Some F-8s will coexist with bumblebee gobies, but not all.

These are quite easy fish, and once adapted to tank life tend to be quite healthy and long lived. They have tons of personality.

Hi RTR - I've just realised you're the same person who wrote the F8 article on badmanstropical fish. Excellent piece that seems to be missing from here (unless I just haven't found it).

From that article, to which I agree with everything, the only variable that seems to be up for a bit more investigation is the SG. I'll put Squaffy back up to 1.005 and see if the listlessness returns, having premixed water on hand to revert back to 1.004 immediately if he shows the slightest discomfort. It's a tricky thing to do with what is now very much a family pet, held in the same regard as our Golden Retriever dog, but the scientist part in me says to give it a try, if only for piece of mind that I have all parameters controlled to the best of my ability.

I do a 50% WC every 4 days, enough time for the refilled 'top-up' water container (30G food grade bucket with a lid) to get up to temperature, marine salt to fully dissolve, fine tune the SG etc. This may seem overkill to some, but our water supply has 30ppm Nitrate (minimum), sometimes 40ppm - another variable, but one that's out of my control.

Maybe I should write up this tank set-up properly, with pictures, for the Brackish Tank part here, and hopefully get some interesting discussion and feedback - also a point of reference for those interested in getting their first F8

Forgot to add...

Also toying with the idea of submitting a PhD research proposal along the lines of developing a home test kit for aquarists to determine the gender of their fish

Did half a PhD many years ago, funded by the then SmithKline Beecham before they merged with Glaxo and pulled PhD funding from many Universities, preferring to offer us in-house positions instead, but we were newly married and pregnant, so opted for the stability of path lab work over an uncertain future with people who had just wrecked a PhD

Welcome to the party! I was a bio-researcher for much of my life, first for the Arny and then directly for the DOD for years at AFIP at Walter Reed AMC in D.C. Then I moved over work for Chris Anfinsen at NIH on human cellular communication molecules. I left there to move over to Otsuka Pharmaceuticals for a few years until I left the labs to become a consultant. That last move was to make enough money to be able to retire eventually without starvation. The labs were challenging and fulfilling, but with pathetic pay scales. Consulting was a standard job, but without open-ended hours per week and at multiples of my lab salaries. I've been retired now over 11 years and I love it. No more commuting and being on call 24/7/365. I do have a few physical issues these days, but they are manageable, especially when I do not have to work anymore. Fish have a hobby since middle school, with some breaks during schooling. I have cut down to 15 tanks at the moment, most in interconnected systems. I am quite addicted to multi-tank systems.

On your issues with the F-8, how is the KH? All my trials with F-8s were on relatively high and stable KH water. I used nothing but aragonite substrates, most with reverse-flow under-gravel filters (RFUG) to maintain the KH at max. Simple low density salt mix does not boost KH enough for my tap water to provide stability. To me, for these fish the KH is as important as the specific gravity, or perhaps more so. All of my water for BW is aged and pre-mixed with the salt and over aragonite RFUG as well. I think and hope the old F-8 article included that, but I have not re-checked it. I have not been back on that site in some time. PP is after me to revise the F-8 article for here, as a number of my articled managed to evaporate locally. I guess that will have to next up, or she might shoot me or at least sedate me and tattoo an F-8 on my forehead...

That might be quite attractive on you!

Squaffy wrote:

but we were newly married and pregnant,

you were both pregnant ...that should have been a PhD study in itself..

Hello and welcome..

Pregnancies are definitely shared life phases, or should be.

I am the wrong age group for tats, sorry, it is just not me. But I would have been disappointed if you had not come back with some such comment...

KH = 12 drops, about 200 mg/l, very hard - as expected with source water from a chalk aquifer

Master of Puffers wrote:you were both pregnant ...that should have been a PhD study in itself..

Hello and welcome..

Thanks. I'm an empath, Gene Roddenberry based the character Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation on me

RTR wrote:Pregnancies are definitely shared life phases, or should be

Very true. I'll send you a PM in a few days with the general idea of the test kit, might risk losing a patent if openly discussed on a public forum.

Some things are definately worth keeping under wraps, only shared with those you can trust profusely. Most scientific stuff is beyond me and likely many others here, however you can never be sure who will stumble across it on a forum. Once ready I would happily help test it if you require? I visit the Isle of Wight yearly

Give us a shout when you're next over Bertie, you're more than welcome to pop round for a cuppa and say hi to Squaffy

Might let go of the 100G if you think it could be useful as a sump for your SW project, needs re-sealing though.

The s/w project is temporarily stalled, new car etc. will be working without a sump for the meantime but thanks for the offer. Just to warn I'm probably the only English man that doesn't do tea, it's all about coffee lol.