The Puffer Forum

Want to put a single GSP in a 38g (3') tank. Plans are:

Aragonite substrate
Fluval 304 or 404 filter
Ocean rock (not live)
Fake plants
Powerhead
Start off fresh/brackish, slowly convert to marine
Cycle while freshwater/low brackish with bio-spira

Does everything with this setup look ok?

Questions:
1) Does aragonite need to be stirred weekly, like sand?
2) How bad of an idea would it be to put in a piece of driftwood or two?
3) Once the tank is full marine, could I put coral in it?

Thoughts/suggestions welcome.
Thanks!

Hi Corey,

Your setup and plan sounds great! Put pics of your puff up when you get him:)

your questions:

1: I dont know on this one. I personally stir my aragonite a bit, just from normal weekly vaccuming.

2: driftwood is a bad idea. It rots very quickly in BW/SW and will pollute your tank. If you want driftwood for your tank, there are some good looking plastic replicas.

3: you could put coral in. your puff might also tear it all to shreds. i'm going to be experimienting with my GSP on this soon. from what I have been told by my friends, its really a hit or miss. either they will eat it or they wont. there might be certain corals they will eat, but others not.
try putting frags in there, and see what happens. that way if he destroys them, its not too expensive of a loss lol

Thanks fisherman (love your avatar BTW).
Will definitely post pics when I get the tank setup. I still need to figure out what to do with my tropical community fish in the meantime - will be a few weeks yet.

Two more questions -

1 - This will be my first time using a canister filter. Do I need to make any precautions due to the aragonite so it doesn't suck it up?

2 - How good are puffers at travelling? Sounds stupid I know, but I am in college ~ an hour away from home, and was wondering how stressful it would for a puffer to come home with me once or twice a year. I have two tanks at my disposal (one at school one at home) of similar size, and of course would acclimate properly, etc. Not the ideal situation I know, but I'd rather not leave my tank over the holidays.

Thanks!

Your setup and plans sounds great.

I stir my aragonite weekly because it's too difficult to vacuum. Your aragonite may be more course and you won't have this problem, but mine just gets sucked up because it's more like sand than gravel. So i just suck out the poo when I do a water change without using the vac attachment.

You can protect your canister by keeping the intake tube a few inches above the aragonite and being careful not to stir it up too much around it. I've had a small amount sucked into the canister, but it gets trapped in the media before it gets to the impeller.

You could also buy the surface skimming attachment for the fluval canisters. It's about 15 bucks and works by skimming the surface of the water as well as taking some from the middle of the water column. I just got one and it's pretty good. It was a little finicky to setup, but once you get it tuned it works great.

Yea, I needed one and got one. Its increadible. I had a huge layer of bio film on the surface, and it cleared up 5 mins after install. Keeps the top clear and lets it breathe well.

I have transported 3 DPs over two trips in a 2.5 and a 5 gal tank. First trip was 10 hours, 2nd trip was a period of two days! They did totally fine however, the only thing that happened "bad" is that some of the other fish from other tanks had to go with them during those periods, and they nipped their fins, but no deaths! I think Puffers transport pretty good so far.

I moved from SC to PA last April... and so did my 4 figure eights, 2 gsps and two columbian cats... It was a 13 hour drive, and they did great. All I did was got to my LFS and they bagged them up for me, and I kept them in a cooler for the duration of the trip. IMO, you should definately try to take your fish with you, every time I leave them in someone else's care, bad things happen... I took quite a few buckets of their water with me, and I floated the filter media in it. I set everything up at 1:00 in the morning... Nothing like setting up 2 big tanks in the middle of the night. So for an hour, it is definately going to be worth it for you unless you can find someone you really trust to keep your little guys... Depending on the size of your tank, you can probably pack up about 50% of the water and it would just be like you did a water change when you get there. LOL at least you won't have two cats, six kittens, 7 birds AND a cooler of fish in your car!