The Puffer Forum

If in week 3 of looking for dp's and only finding figure 8's i think that if they dont have them on wednesday im just gonna trun the whole damn setup to brakish.

i know my oto's will have to go and im not sure if my amazon swords will survive in light brakish? u can tell me.

well my question is i know i can house 1 figure eight in a 10g but if the oppurtunity arrises could i put some bumble gobies in there 2?

it will be heavily planted...with fake plants.

and many caves and some flower pots.

any help on what i need to go brakish will be great!

Ten gallons is minimal housing for an F-8 alone for me, no tankmates. If you want to co-house Bumblebees, moving up to a 15 would be better IMHO.

I want a figure 8 so bad...I like f8 better than GSPs

I actually agree, in part because the F-8 has more interesting markings and hold their colors and pattern well throughout their life. They are also a bit easier to manage - they will overeat as badly as any puff, but I can hold them to a respectable profile much more easily than a GSP. The downside is that they are only half the length, a quarter the mass of a GSP.

so i can house 1 f8 on his won in a 10g?

also what materials do i need to go over to brakish? havent found much info on it....

pufferlist says 15g, But i personnaly would do a min of 20. Ive seen how active these little guys are. Brackish water all u need is a hydromete and some MARINE salt and your good to go

I agree with RTR that a single Figure 8 will be fine in a 10 gallon tank with no tankmates. I do think you'll likely have to do a mid-week water change when the Figure 8 is full grown, but other than that you'd be fine.

I disagree with RTR about the smaller size being a downside...I like smaller fish, and think the figure 8 is a perfect size.

As for what you need, you need Salwater aquarium mix like Instant ocean (not dehydrated sea salt or plain old aqaurium salt), a hydrometer that reads to 1.000 (important, some don't go that low, but Instant Ocean's does), and some argonite/crushed coral either for the substrate or in a media bag in your filter to increase KH unless your tap water has a high KH (8 or higher would be great - then you don't need the crushed coral/argonite).

Personally, I'd try keeping your plants and slowly increase salinity by .001 or .002 each week so the plants can adjust. Additionally, you need to find out what SG the figure 8s are kept at at the LFS. Usually they're in pure FW or FW with plain aquarium salt, so the gradual weekly SG increase I mention above is great for them, too. IF the LFS figure 8s are in real BW, you'd need to set your tank at the higher SG so the fish aren't shocked by a big SG change.

Hope that helps!

Eric

Im going to have to warn that I had huge issue with salinity and plants. The second I started addint salt my plants began to die.

welli can always try....the plants arent that great i guess?

Lots of folks have said they've had problems. I think the keys are low salinity (mine are thriving at 1.005), slow introduction to BW (mine went up .001 per week), and plant choice.

I have Water Sprite (the floating type), duckweed, java moss and java fern. They've been in there over two months now (I think). At first, the java fern and the water sprite took on a significant amount of diatom algae, but now they're free of the stuff. I'm throwing out water sprite and duckweed every other week (it's doubling in that timeframe which matches the watersprite growth in my pure FW tank), and the java fern is growing very well and looks very healthy. The java moss is growing more slowly but also doing well.

If I'd stopped this at about week 2-3, when the java fern and watersprite were looking their absolute worst (I nearly did), I wouldn't have seen them rebound like they have.

Eric

My frill and ludwiga couldnt take it at all. I only added 5 tsp of salt too.

My ludwiga died in days. The frill was holding on but its stalk was weakened and kept breaking.

hmmmm, and if im not mistaken i have to get rid of the oto's right?

Yup.

I don't think stem plants do as well in either BW or hard water like in rift lake tanks...

Eric