The Puffer Forum

Hi,
I am currently setting up a 93 Liter tank as a species tank for pea puffers (might add a couple of ottocinculus and risk a couple of amano shrimps as well). The plan is to have 4 pea puffers in this tank (1 male and 3 females). I've been reading abit about this speices and have read that sand is prefered as substrate. Since I would like to use this as a scaped tank and possibly have some parts carpeting, I was hoping two use two substrates namely ADA Colorado Sand and ADA Aqua Soil Africana Powder.
However after reading some more I've read that the puffers will sometimes chew on the substrate and may end up swallowing some in the process, hence why sand is required because it will not damage their digestive system
The following questions come to mind:

1) Will these pea puffers disturb the substrate?
2) If so is carpeting a bad idea in a pea puffer tank?
3) Can the ADA Aqua Soil Africana powder be harmful to the puffers?
4) Does anyone use ADA Aqua Soil powder in puffer tanks without issues?

Thanks in Advance

Regards

Joe

Since I'm not familiar with the plant products you mention, I will stick with answering your 1st 2 Qs:
1) Those little puffers will not disturb the substrate but you may fins tiny bites in the plants.
2) I don't see why you couldn't carpet the tank with plants, I'm sure they'd love it!

Like Pufferpunk, I don't use fertilizers for my plants, so I'm not too familiar with them. Also, a plant carpet would be fine but the puffers will most likely take bites out of leafy plants while hunting snails.

My answers to the last couple of q's:
3. Ada aqua soil can harm puffers in the sense that over the first couple of weeks it can leach ammonia into the water column, if you are fishlessly cycling after adding the soil then there should be no problems.
4. I don't use ADA aquasoil but I do use an aquasoil in my figure 8 puffer tank, I have capped my soil with sand (I still have accidentally managed to get some soil on top of the sand though ) but that is to try to prevent a messy tank in the future when the soil breaks down and may not be able to handle disturbance without kicking a load up into the water column. I can't say that I have ever noticed my puffer eating substrate but even if he did accidentally eat a small amount of soil I guess that because the particles are so small it would pass right through and out the other end.

Hi thanks for your replies. @pufferpunk and @puffer I don't mind biten plants more leaves will grow eventually but it's good to know they won't make a mess off the substrate. Thanks for your feedback. @Iliveinazoo the fact that ADA releases ammonia initially is one of the reasons why I like the substrate it helps me cycle the aquarium without adding anything else
Also thanks for your reply this helps me stick to my preferred substrate with abit more confidence.
Regards
Joe