The Puffer Forum

Sadly, my two brazilian puffers died a few weeks back. I was horrified to find them dead when I got home from work. I have always been really careful with the water quality and made sure that they had enough crunchies to eat. I tested the water the day that they died and there was nothing out of the ordinary so I am guessing it was an infection of some sorts so I have treated the tank with a few different anti-bacterials (including salt) and am now trying to get a new puffer.

Hopefully I should be getting my hands on a Figure 8 this weekend which means I will have to remove the Oto and SAE from the old tank since they are not brackish fish (I have plenty of other places to put them). Neither of these two are gonna be easy to catch so I have decided to make a big deal of things... I am going to pull up all the plants, net the fish out, syphon out the sand and redo the tank from scratch. I was thinking of putting some laterite down and then topping it with black gravel so that when I put the plants back they should have a much happier life, especially since we already have high lighting and CO2 in there.

How much laterite would I need to cover the base of a 15 gallon tank?

Plants are not going to survive in the Brackish conditions required for a Figure 8. Which would you rather have - plants of a F8? If the answer is plants, I would try to find some other FW puffer. See the puffer list for profiles of FW puffs.

F8's only require low end brackish and its perfectly capable of sustaining a number of brasckish adaptable plants like java ferns, hygro & anubais.

Sustaining, maybe--at least in the case of Java Fern. "Growing" is a completely different situation; CO2 and high-light would be wasted. Not a good pairing in my opinion, but feel free to give it a try!

I still have java fern, java moss and water sprite (the floating variety) doing great in 1.005 for over 5 weeks now (it may be longer). All are growing - initially, there was diatom growth on the leaves of the fern and water sprite, but new growth doesn't have this issue and the water sprite is at the point I'm tossing some out eat week because of it's growth.

If I could find some locally, I'd try val's, too, but my good plant LFS annoying went plantless while they obtain a new light system .

Eric

It is usually suggested to use aragonite or crushed coral as substrate for BW fish, to maintin a steady pH of around 8.