The Puffer Forum

I recently brought a 22 gallon aquarium. It's completely empty at the moment but I'm planning to put a single figure 8 in there (which if i maintain with regular water changed and over filter should be fine) The tanks going to be very planted seen as I know puffers like the explore!

I'm just really confused about how I should set up and cycle a Brakish aquarium. I currently keep dwarf puffers (in freshwater of course) and I at first thought I could take some seed material (sand and filter media) and seed my new aquarium to help speed up the cycle but apparently putting the bacteria into an aquarium of 1.005 sg would kill all the bacteria off?
I also read that I could put in the media and increase the salt gradually by 0.001 per week but that seems like it would take a great deal of time?

Any suggestions of how best to cycle this tank?
I'm new to Brakish and am at a total loss haha

library/puffers-in-focus/fig8/
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1658
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19348
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14694

Surely if I raise it by 0.002 per week (as suggested) it will take me ages to get to 1.005. Or is my maths wrong?

Also, as a side question. Would it be possible to house a few bumblebee gobies in the tank? (I would love 2 puffers but wouldn't want to risk them fighting so was wondering if these fish are a possibility) Does it just depend on the puffers personality ?

How large a tank? It would only take 7-8 weeks to get the SG from 1.000 -1.015. Not too bad in the scheme of things, considering they live up to 18 years.

ck9 wrote:Surely if I raise it by 0.002 per week (as suggested) it will take me ages to get to 1.005. Or is my maths wrong?

3 weeks.

ck9 wrote:Also, as a side question. Would it be possible to house a few bumblebee gobies in the tank? (I would love 2 puffers but wouldn't want to risk them fighting so was wondering if these fish are a possibility) Does it just depend on the puffers personality ?

You could house bumblebee gobies with a f8. Some report that they become puffer food but mine got along fine. Neale Monks recommends 1 BBG per 20cm diameter of tank surface area because they tend to whittle their own numbers down if stocked too heavily