The Puffer Forum

I currently have a 10G freshwater tank. I took readings today and they were as follows:

Temperature: 78 Fahrenheit
pH level: over 7.6
ammonia: 0ppm
nitrate: 10ppm
nitrite: 0ppm

Is this a good condition for a puffer? There is not one in there currently, I didn't want to add one if the tank conditions were bad. It has been cycling for about a week and a half now. I have been using 3 tiger barbs (small) to cycle the tank for the past few days.
Yesterday I added a 3" round air stone to help with the circulation of the tank. Do puffers enjoy these? It is like a volcano of bubbles, I thought the puff may like to play in it! I still can't decide what type of puffer- I go back and forth between a dwarf and a F8!! such a hard decision...

I would have expected to detect some ammonia or nitrite if the tank has only been cycling for a week. Generally we are looking at around a month to cycle if you are using fish. Yes the stats are ideal but the tank has not cycled yet so expect those readings to rise as it cycles.
The tank is probably a little small for a Fig 8 long term. Should be ok for a couple of dwarfs though.

My wife and I actually got a tank cycled in 11 days not too long ago. We were assisted with API's stress zyme, but it was cycled. We've since added several fish and have gotten no rises in parameters. The ammonia spiked after 4 days and the nitrites spiked after 6 or 7. After a partial and some waiting the levels dropped to 0. We do, however, check the params daily to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but it's been several weeks now and still perfect. We will stop testing daily in a week.