The Puffer Forum

Hiya! I've read info on the site several times, but I've never actually signed up until now. Fin is short for a name I use for some hobbies, so that's perfectly cool to call me by.

I've always been really big in to fish, but only started getting in to it as a serious hobby over the past 2 years. I wanted to have fish that had lots of personality and were entertaining to watch. I'm not a super big fan of mindless or schooling fish, with a few exceptions. My wife was very partial to Piranhas, but after seeing some puffers for sale at a LFS I decided to look in to them.

I currently have a 5 gallon tank with a couple of guppies, Scarlet Badis Dario Dario, and a small goby which I have suddenly forgotten the name of.

The other tank I have is a larger 20G long, with 2 filters an aqualand 50g filter and a marineland penguin 200 50g Filter, including a power head that cycles 110 gph for extra current. It sounds a little overboard I'm sure, but the reason for such heavy current and filtration are the residents of my tank. I currently have 3 SAPs, 1 DP, 2 fairly large mini or fiddler crabs, 2 kuhli loach, a Dwarf Cory catfish, numerous ghost shrimp and a Bambo shrimp.

I often receive questions from the LFS about how I can keep these things together. First, the tank is heavily planted, second, the fiddlers are actually larger than the SAP because of their age, third for some reason the SAPs have never developed a taste for ghost shrimp, and lastly because of my tank's rather unique setup in order to accommodate the crabs. Crabs of course have to have dry land. They've done exceptionally well in freshwater, even though it's widely recognized they're a brackish species, and have currently been in freshwater for almost a year and a half now. In the corner of my tank however, I have a small 2 gallon rectangular tank that sits upside down in one of the corners, in the water. It is braced in place in the tank at the top and has air pumped in to it, with sand, and drift wood coming up to create a small beach. The crabs are capable of going up in to the the mini beach for land.

Sorry for the size of that picture lol. It came out huge.

I've had some issues with the SAPs with glass surfing, since that seems to be a common issue with SAP owners, but since I added in the power head recently, it seems like they're chilling out some and I'm hoping that pattern continues since I just added it today.

I'm sorry to tell you, that tank just isn't proper housing for the fish in there. SAPs require 15g for the 1st one & 10g for each one after that. They prefer a large, long swimming space, as they are extremely active swimmers. A 55g would be best for 3 of them. I have found many bite marks on my SAPs when keeping a DP in with them, they're vicious lil fish! Not a great idea...
Please read: library/puffers-in-focus/sap/

Welcome to the forum. A huge plus 1 to the above. I didn't get my sap to settle down properly until he was in a huge tank. There is serious comparability issues in there , it may work while they are young but will unlikely last long

Even if my tank is wrong, that was a major buzzkill and I was hoping for a slightly better welcome than that.

I have been reconsidering my purchase of the SAPs for awhile now and was thinking of looking for a place that would be better suited for them. If anyone is looking for SAPs lemme know.

LOL, sorry about that but we're more here for the puffers than the humans, I guess...

I can understand, I mean I signed up because I love puffers and my fish as well.

I'm sure it also doesn't help that half the picture of the tank got cut off, because it's extra long for it's gallon size.

I'm just debating on whether to get a bigger tank so I can keep them, or find a different home for them and add another DP or two.

I don't see any of the aggression from them that you mentioned, heck the DP is almost the same size as them right now since he's rather old. My wife would like to keep them, but I've gotta see about getting a much larger tank. I'm not sure if the one I have in the basement is that large, time to dust off the miners cap and go look!

I think if you give them the room, you'll find them to be rewarding wet pets! Keep in mind though, this particular species will need regular dentistry done by you.

Ya, I've actually had them for quite awhile now and I've had to trim their teeth already. Haven't had any issues with that part so far. I enjoy doing research before I jump in to something, and I've been doing a lot of heavy reading on puffers for the past year or so. SAPs didn't have a ton of info, and several of the places I read up on seemed to think that I would have ample room, but I think that's for them to live, but not quite to the comfort level a fish of this high energy and space requirements really needs, so that's kind of where I'm at now.

I just dug through my dusty ole basement and the tank that I have is a 40g high, not long, so I guess I'll be picking up a longer tank here soon and work on getting it set up and cycling. I have a ton of media left over, and I grow my own FW plants to sell to a LFS so I have plenty of that as well.

If you use half the filter media from your existing set up on the new tank you will be good to go in no time. You will need to keep a close eye on both tanks for a little while

Most puffers are best in species tanks, and SAPs are especially so. If kept with outher fish, they will eat the softer foods most fish get and magnify their incisor problems. They are best with their own kind and a diet ~95% home reared common pond and ramshorn snails which will counteract much or all of of their incisor plate growth problems. They are not tightly schooling as are Danios and many Rasboras, but will school loosely if stronger current is provided along the longest front glass panel. Less active fish are quite likely to be nipped. Do not try co-housing with Corydorus catfish - their dorsal fins will be puffer food.

HTH