The Puffer Forum

Hello, I'm René. My daughter (who is 13) brought home a puffer a couple of months ago from Walmart on an impulse buy. The fact that they even let a child buy an animal to begin with was annoying enough, but when I took him back I unfortunately saw the state the other poor little puffers were in and quickly changed my mind and brought him back home. Up till now I have been reading everything I can on these guys online, while he ever so happily seems to be living in our tropical tank with assorted tetras and African frogs. So far he's been ok and surprisingly hasn't torn into any fish yet or bothered the frogs. Although he has helped himself to the ghost shrimp lol. I do feed bloodworms every other day because of the frogs, maybe that plus the shrimp have helped keep him occupied idk. That being said from what I can tell at his size (approx 1in) he should be in brackish water?? (I think) and in his own tank. I found a good price on a 24 gal deluxe nano cube tank and ordered it last week. It should be here in another week or so. I am hoping that will be big enough at least for a year. What I am wanting advice on is how to go about setting up and cycling this tank as I've never had a fish like this before. Should I start it out as fresh water and slowly add the instant ocean salt? Should I go with sand as the substrate or is there something else that would be better? I have gotten surprisingly attached to this little fella and want him to be happy and healthy. Any advice or pointers that may not have been in the information I have read would be greatly appreciated. He was just labeled as a "Green Spotted Puffer" and I'm finding there are several types so I want to be sure I have accurate info. I stumbled upon these forums while doing my research. Thank you in advance for any help.

My suggestion is to just buy a bottle of Tetra Safestart & add it to the filter, then add your puffer. It will cycle the tank instantly.
Have you read the articles in our Library?

I have been going through them since yeserday yes, there's a lot to read ... Thank you for the advice!

So you've caught the puffer big like the rest of us! Hehe, they're addicting so be careful! The 24g should be fine for a year. Once you get up to saltwater, the possibilities are endless! I had to raise my Ceylon puffers (very similar needs to gsp) salinity because I bought her as fresh. She's now in full salt less than a year later. I just added 5 gallons of saltwater every few weeks, she's in a 55 by herself at the moment.