The Puffer Forum

Hi my name is Taybra and i just now joined this forum. i work in a fish store but we do not carry brackish or freshwater puffers very often so i have manyyyyy un-answered questions! i ordered 2 Figure Eight puffers two days ago for my home aquarium and they are set to arrive tomorrow. im soo nervous. ive done everything i need to do in my 55gal EXCEPT i read that the ph needs to be at or around 8. The tank is set up with crushed shell substrate just because thats what i had put in it when i set it up about a year ago. so my question right now is what do you suggest i use to raise my ph for these puffers? its around 6.5 - 7 as of right now and i need a quick fix! also any fw puffer advice would be great THANKS!!
Taybra

Hi and welcome. Quick fixes are disasters waiting to happen, stability is more important than the ideal ph. Arognite sand would help buffer it. You are aware that figure 8 puffers are not a freshwater species? They are a low end brackish fish that require a sg of 1.003-1.005

yes i know about the brackish but they are misleadingly sold as freshwater where i work. sorry to confuse

As Bertie 83 says fluctuating ph is to be avoided. A crushed shell substrate is likely to provide a certain level of buffering as it will be mostly calcium carbonate also once you start adding salt your pH will rise further. Maybe keep your f8 at the higher end of their salinity range, say SG1.005-1.008 to keep the PH above 7.

Iliveinazoo wrote:As Bertie 83 says fluctuating ph is to be avoided. A crushed shell substrate is likely to provide a certain level of buffering as it will be mostly calcium carbonate also once you start adding salt your pH will rise further. Maybe keep your f8 at the higher end of their salinity range, say SG1.005-1.008 to keep the PH above 7.

alright, thanks so much for the advice. sounds easy enough

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library/puffers-in-focus/fig8/

That will certainly help the ph level, however what would be better long term perfect ph or recommended salinity? I'm not sure which would have least affect on lifespan to be honest. This may well be something rtr can help us out with next time he is around.

F8s will do well in VERY hard FW with a stable pH but that's much more difficult to attain than just making it light BW.

What's you current SG? I keep my sg at 1.004 and use the same substrate you have and my ph is 8. Your water source may be softer then mine though, try measuring your source water ph.

+1 to all of the above. IMHO & IME, for F-8s, stability is quite important. If you have a spare canister, fill a couple of mesh bags with coral rubble, add an internal sponge filter on the canister intake, and operate it 24/7 on the tank. Shut the filter down weekly and remove and rinse the intake sponge (you can use tap water, you are not interested in bacteria in this canister). If the prefiter appears very dirty, rinse the prefiter more frequently. Monthly remove the bag of coral rubble and rinse it well and allow to dry. Replace it with the alternate bag of rubble. This process keeps the coral rubble from becoming a biofilter - which can block solution of the alkalinity support ions from the coral rubble. Some years back, my office water was much softer than my home (i.e., the water I used for my tanks) and my F-8 tank at work fluctuated in pH as a result. The coral rubble canister helped a lot in maintaining stability. It still was not perfect, so did another coral rubble canister on the make-up water in a spare tank beneath my desk. That precondition the water enough to give stable alkalinity

I don't know if that is all absolutely necessary, but I did a lot of work with F-8s, and I did decide that the stability of the alkalinity was at least equally important as that of the salinity, and perhaps more so. If your new F-8s survive in your care >1-3 months and you continue with stable conditions after that, they should live ~15-20 years, certainly >10 years. In the wild they do come anywhere near that average lifespan. These are fish which can and do occupy a variety of water conditions and changing water conditions in the wild. In captivity however, stability is is often critical to long life for captives. I judge my successes largely by how long my fish live.

HTH