The Puffer Forum

Hey everyone! I've been completely enamored of valentini puffers for years now, ever since I started thinking about setting up a saltwater tank. I've had my aquarium running since February and I finally decided to take the plunge and get a puffer. I've been calling him (I think it's a him) Puff Puff. Here's some info about my setup:

Main tank - 50 g, with about 1 inch live sand and three largish pieces of live rock
Refugium - 20 g-ish, running at about 15 g right now with live sand/rock rubble and a ball of Chaeto
Filtration - Emperor 400 power filter with a Clear Fx Pro bag and a Purigen bag stuck in
Inhabitants - 2 Ocellaris clownfish and 1 firefish goby in the main tank; 2 scarlet skunk cleaner shrimp, 1 fighting conch, and 1 Astraea snail in the fuge (I set up the fuge to save them from the puffer)

Water parameters:
pH - 8.1
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 80 ppm (I know this is really high, I'm working on bringing it down with more frequent water changes)
SG - 1.0235
Temp - 76.7 °F

I'm feeding a mix of Hikari Mega-Marine Algae, San Francisco Bay Brand Frozen Mussel, and Tetra brand Jumbo Krill for crunchiness. Puff Puff is not a very good eater so far though. First morning he was here, I fed the mega-marine algae and he ate a shrimp from it, then nothing since. Next day I tried a krill and he ate one leg, hasn't touched any since. I then got the frozen mussel and again he ate the first try and hasn't since. This evening I fed the mega-marine again and he ate a few shrimp. He seemed to continue searching for food after it was gone so I tried offering him another krill but he didn't eat it.

He did go into a tank with a large collonista snail population and they seem to be disappearing, so I think he's eating them when I'm not looking. I have plans to set up a small tank to breed pond snails I can get from a friend with a freshwater tank, but is that going to be enough? Does anyone have experience feeding freshwater snails to a saltwater puffer or recommendations? Or any other idea of how to get him to eat?

Since I removed all of my CUC to the refugium, what care do I now need to provide my sand bed? Does it need stirring/vacuuming or will it be okay as is?

Any other advice to share? I want to give him the best care possible. He's a bit camera shy but I have a couple of pictures I can try to upload next time I'm online.

How about a sand-sifting starfish? That should take care of your sand. I always liked a cucumber in my SW tanks, too.

You are using FW filtration on a SW tank, that's why you have such high nitrate. Remove the Emperor & add a protein skimmer & lots more LR (1 1/2-2lbs/gal). That'll take care of the nitrate & you won't have to do nearly as many $$$ WC!

As far as his appetite, my guess is he's too full of snails to eat the foods you are offering him. I had great success feeding live blackworms soaked in vitamins.

+1 to adding a skimmer. You can keep the emperor on to run your purigen but remove all the other media. I use an ac50 on my sw to run purigen and carbon. I feed my gsp pond and ramshorn that I breed. Trick here is make sure that it sees you adding the food. If it doesn't eat the fw snails take them out as they will die in the sw and add to your nitrate levels. As PP stated blackworms are fantastic I feed them to all of my fish.

A protein skimmer might have to be my next investment. The refugium is set up to hold one, it just took a chunk out of my savings that I need to build back up again. And I'll definitely look for blackworms next time I stop by the LFS.

When you feed them the snails do you just drop them in in front of the puffers or do you put them onto some sort of dish?

Puff Puff ate again tonight, a little bit of the frozen mussel. Every time I look at him he seems more colorful. There is some blue streaking just behind each of his eyes and pale streaks going through his dark saddles which are starting to look more of an iridescent green. This picture isn't very high quality and it's rotated incorrectly but trust me, he's beautiful.

Be sure you soak everything you offer him that's not live, in Selcon & Vita-chem.

Selcon?

Huh had never heard of this before. Definitely going to grab some I was just using vita Chem fresh and marine for their respective tanks.

Selcon is amino acids for SW species.