The Puffer Forum

Hello,

I'm new to this forum but have been keeping fish tanks for along time now. Recently I decided to setup a 75 gallon grow out tank and wanted to do brackish fish. I got the tank cycled and running low end brackish with 3 small (1 inch) GSPs. These 3 have gotten along very well since I got them 2 weeks ago, and only really steal food from each other. Recently one of the larger 2 started just chilling down in the gravel over on the side of the tank. He'll come up and eat and take laps around the tank but reverts back to just chilling on the bottom. I've never noticed this before and it just has me on edge. The water parameters are good (using tube freshwater API kit) and stay under 5ppm nitrates with weekly 15 gallon water changes. Any thoughts on if this is stress related or if this is normal? Only 1 of three doing it. I did read that their bellies can turn dark if stressed, all 3 have very white bellies. Also they've been fed freeze dried shrimp since I got them.

http://imgur.com/3nff7MR

Sorry for the grainy photo, zoomed in with my cell phone to take the photo.

They do chill at times & could just be sleeping. I do suggest a more varied diet though: http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/lib ... r-puffers/

OK cool, just worried since it seemed to be happening more often.

Interesting article on the varied diet, I did plan on feeding them live crustaceans. I planned on snails with the occasional shrimp or maybe even crab from time to time.

I do worry though, I don't see trumpet snails on that list (which my LFS feeds their GSP and F8's with) or the freeze dried shrimp, just see other snails and freeze dried krill.

is there any reason to remove the freeze dried shrimp or trumpet snails from their food rotation?

Some trumpet snails such as the Malaysian trumpet snail have very hard shells. Hard enough to break a determined puffers teeth on occasion. I do feed then to my young puffers but I crush them just before dropping them in.

Well that sucks, the LFS assured me they were good to feed them (as they feed them to their GSPs all the time.)

I know to take what the LFS says and research it, as it's the same with the internet, mixed accuracy with data. I did see that snails are very common diet for them, should have specifically looked for the trumpet to be listed.

I bought 10 of the Malaysian trumpets they had and happily dumped them into the 75G. They are all throughout the gravel substrate now, multiplying as I hoped they would for food to the puffers.

Should I be trying to get them out asap? I don't want my puffers to break their beaks, I could only imagine how long it will take me to find all of them. I read assassin snails might eat them, but I feel that would just lead to more snail problems. Maybe I'll just start leaving a piece of cucumber in there and trying to catch them slowly...