The Puffer Forum

Hi there,

This is my first time posting and while I have been keeping freshwater fish for several years my first puffer is my young Fahaka. He (I'm guessing) is still very small, approximately 2 inches now. He's doing well in his little show tank for now and before you ask I do have a larger tank waiting to setup to be his long time home. But right now I can't sleep and as I sit here watching him swim happily I start to ponder long-term filtration options. My original concept was to take the old 55 gallon ceramic tank I have and make it into a fluidized sump with socks at the one end and K1 in the fluidized portion. A few bubble walls along the flow path and well you get the idea. But then I started to wonder, would a largely planted refugium sump be able to provide enough filtration for him as he got older along with providing a place to farm some snails for food? With a slower return pump in the sump and a circulation pump added in the tank I am thinking it might work it might work without adding the noise of a air pump. I could also showcase the refugium underneath his tank if I took this approach. Anyway, let me know what you think. If so, would there be any suggestions on stocking this other than as heavily as possible? Ideally I want to keep it simple, low-tech, and no CO2 if possible.

Thanks ahead of time.

PS:(routine water changes are still needed obviously, just thinking of an alternate way to provide a regulated filtration.)

How about something like this?
library/water-filtration/veggiefiltersrtr/

This is essentially what I was envisioning, yes. My questions was more given the large load that the fahaka puffer puts on a system later in life, has anyone personally had experience with using a heavily planted refugium (aka - veggie filter) for as the main filtration method rather than a more traditional sump that is just worried about high bacteria load and supplemented with water changes / delusion to remove the nitrites. ? If not, that's a fine answer as well.

I think that article says it all. I do believe that kind of large natural filtration system would be much more beneficial than several canisters.