The Puffer Forum

Yesterday my gf and I went to the LFS and custom ordered a 7.5 gallon Cube tank (1'x1'x1') to breed snails in and house a betta. The equipment is being bought from bigalsonline.com tonight. As far as I know all I need is a heater and a filter...what else am I missing? What should I feed the snails? The heater is a 50 watt visi-therm stealth heater and the filter is a AC20 powerfilter. I have also read that I need to get a sponge cone to cover the end of the power filter, where can I get that? Oh, my friend at the LFS also said that I will be getting some nuisance snails to breed and feed to the puffers....Oh and I should cycle the snail tank right? Should I treat it like any other tank? With weekly 50% water changes, vaccums and such after the cycle, and can I cycle with snails? or should I use the betta?

Now the puffers The Dwarf puffers are going to be put in a 15 gallon flat (2'x1'x1'). It has a AC30 powerfilter already on it, a 75 watt visi-therm heater. Tonight an order will go in for an air pump tubing and air stone. Where plants are concerned we are just going to put a bunch of fake ones in. Now the lighting is poor, so should I worry about that? They will get plenty of light from the sun coming through the blinds, but should there be a specific wattage that is run a particular # of hours a day? Also I was told here that 5 puffers would be a good idea, but my friend said 10 would be fine...10 is alot and I dont think I would want 10 in there, what do u guys think?

It also wouldnt be horrible if these guys bred at some time in the future, so what kinda things should I do now to help that happen later?

Thanks so much for reading all of this and please comment, any help will be greatly appreciated

1 DP for every 3 gallons, which means a max of 5 for a 15g. Please do not try to go with 10, you'll just have a lot of deaths. They are very territorial and aggressive, surprisingly so for little bitty things, and have a rather high bioload. Make sure you vacuum the gravel regularly.

With fake plants, doesn't matter how much light you have or how long they are on. Regular stock lighting is fine.

Just make sure the snails are not MTS. Any other kind is fine.

I think your friend is talking about the same thing as 'pest snails' a.k.a. pond snails.

Never know though and need to be sure. My LFS and the LPSes call MTS "pest snails' or 'nuisance snails.'

Nah, they arent MTS, cuz he mentined that the puffs shouldnt eat those. And I wont go with 10, I was gonna stick with 5 at the most

is all of my equip going to be okay?

The snail tank plan sounds great! My snails are in a 5g with just a powerhead and airhose, and they're happily breeding after just 2-3 weeks. I have java moss and a big floating fake plant in there, along with my bird's old cuttlebone for healthy shells. I didn't cycle the tank or anything, but I'd be sure to do that if the betta's going to be living there. I feed my snails chopped green beans that I boil for five minutes to make them sink and be more digestible. But, with your betta in there you may be able to simply "overfeed" him and leave the extra for the snails. If the betta's a little piglet, though, you may have to switch to lettuce, green beans, or some other vegetable product he may not recognise as food. I tend to do water changes every other day or every three days, whenever my snails have finished eating, because they produce so darn much sewage. Have fun!

My bettas ate baby snails.

well...then I hope that mine doesnt, if it turns out he does then there is another tank he can go into

Ooh. Do female bettas eat snail babies, perhaps? Cuz I had a massive snail out break in my 10 gallon. (Originally it only had 3 pond snails and a mystery snail) I moved alot out to my pond. There were still a whole bunch. I added two female bettas to the tank. (There are also two red claw crabs and two dwarf platies in it) But the snail population has rapidly decreased and there have been a bunch of empty snail shells. I thought it may have been the crabs, since they were added at the same time. But I didn't know.

One more question: How do you guys clean up empty snail shells? My siphon doesn't suck them up.

Fingers.

Oh. One more question, BM, since I just noticed that you have crabs. Are "Red claw" and the crabs you have the same? They look fairly identical. But I was told they didn't need salt, and everything that I found about "red claw crabs" said they were freshwater. And now I'm confused. If they need salt I have a 5 gallon I can move them to.

Same thing, I believe. Perisesarma bidens. They are estuarine critters from what I understand, which means brackish. They aren't terribly particular about how much salt, according to my research, but live longer and healthier lives if they have it. They also need a way to climb out of the water (without escaping). Check out my thread in the Other Photos section for some pics.

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/p ... cle_id=112

Thanks! Yeah, I knew about the air access thing. Righto.

Personally, I wouldn't go with more then 3 or 4 dwarves in a 15 gallon, but its up to you.

Yeah, make sure a crab or crayfish can't escape. I still can't find a crayfish that escaped a few days ago....

If it's been a few days, just follow your nose. Unless you have a cat or dog, in which case they will have already solved the problem for you...