Dave

You can acquire a small bottle of clove oil at CO-OP pharmacies. It will be clearly visible if their teeth plates need trimming. Dwarf puffers don't seem to exhibit the same growth of teeth. Many go their entire lives without eating crunchy stuff without any issues. On the other end of the spectrum, a South American Puffer, Colomesus asellus, have extraordinary teeth and frequently require trimming even with a steady diet of snails. It doesn't sound like your puffer needs a trip to the dentist just yet :thumbs:

Do you use undergravel filters Val? If I had the time and energy and space, I'd keep a tank or two running just in case as well.

I recently had to dismantle a couple tanks, and will be selling them shortly(check the buy/sell forum soon ). I intend on keeping one of the filters for a hospital tank if necessary, but I've always had a problem of having a cycled filter right off the bat. I don't want to keep an extra tank running just because I may need the extra space/filtration. I already am cramped on space and $$$ as it is, so I am keeping my tanks to a minimum. I took the media out of my AC 200 and placed it in the sump of my 90g along with the bio balls to keep the bacteria alive for future use. Both are & will be freshwater, so no worries. I just figured it might be handy to pull out and slap together a hospital tank in a jiffy. I suppose you could do that with canister filters too. Works both ways too. its probably common practice, but I figured I'd share since it just dawned on me today as I was taking the tanks apart

Are aquariums at Pisces, All-Glass-Aquariums?

I use flourite as my only substrate in all my planted tanks. Unforunately, it can become costly, so I fudged it a bit on my 90 gallon with adding 1/3 regular gravel.

I understand your frustration. I like to hear all viewpoints, as I tend to take everything with a grain of salt and form my own opinions. I know that the malaysian driftwood that I use in my planted tanks does not take well to BW as it tends to disintigrate, even at the best of times in FW. I know The Puffer Forum is entrenched in some of their ideas, but I believe it to be good natured. Their fastidious habits certainly keep a tank clean and a fish healthy, you cannot deny that! I was trying to go for a fallen tree look with large long pieces of thin driftwood from the BC coast. Someone brought up the issue of the shiny factor of the epoxy, but I believe that can be countered with a bit of fine-grit sandpaper. 'll be sure to try this on a small piece of wood first to see if the epoxy even works. The reason for the epoxy is that the decor will primarily be wood, with very few rocks. I want to minimise the detrius coming off the wood, polluting the nice sand below

I have looked high and low for some truly nice fake driftwood to no avail. I have some West System Epoxy that is aquarium safe. I initially bought it to make one of these: http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_other_netmax_styro.htm I'm thinking that if a piece of driftwood is sealed, it will not rot. Am I correct for thinking that? (crossposted from The Puffer Forum as I know this place gets lots more traffic )

:tongue: Thats why I ask the best!

Feeder cones work. Tweezers work as well. I prefer my tweezers over the cone because I can give "special attention" to a couple of my puffs that are a bit shy of others, including their own kind.

These are two areas where I feel I lack knowledge and experience. What are some quality info sites that everyone here visits on a regular basis? I'd like to broaden my horizons

bacteria thief! Yeah, I know that individuals can order in, but as far as a pet store importing it, I thought there were regulations with that.

Nitrosomas spp. and Nitrobacter spp. do not really reside in the water column. They will colonize any suitable place where they can get their food, ie ammonia and nitrite. This is primarily in the high-flow areas, ie filter biomedia and filter supply/return pipes to a lesser degree. The water, the gravel, the driftwood, etc from an old tank cannot hurt a new tank, but do not really aid in the maturation of it. If you use an undergravel filter, or a RUGF, then the "filter media" is your substrate. Only if you were planning on taking substrate from one UGF and placing it into a brand new tank with another UGF, would you get a similar experience of instant cycling. In short, for most Canadians in the hobby at this point, there are only a few ways to cycle a tank. Seed the new filter with old filter media. This is achieved by squeezing established filter media over top of the new filter media, thus transposing some of the bacteria-rich filter gunk. A better method would be to use part of the established filter biomedia and place it upstream of the new media, allowing the established bacteria to spread. Fishless cycling entails dosing ammonia up to 5ppm, and kickstarting the bacterial colonization. This method requires close observation of all three titres over the duration of the dosing, but works quite well and very fast in some cases. Run the new filter and an old filter in conjunction for several months. I've had to do this myself due to an emergency tank leak before. Not recommended as the new filter bacteria population will be less as the established filter bacteria population takes some of the workload. The introduction of fish must be slow because of this. Cycle with some hardy fish. Its not something you want to do, nor should you do, as nitrite and ammonia are toxic to fish and would be inhumane to do so, but it would not be a complete list without it. Biospira is the only product on the market that can instantly cycle a new tank. There is a freshwater and a saltwater formula. I believe border regulations prohibit the import of live bacteria yada yada yada. :bang1: We cannot get this in Canada, but if you do make a roadtrip to the states and manage to get your hands on some, it'd be worth its weight in gold. Just make sure to to observe the expiry date and keep it refrigerated edit: That septic bacteria looks interesting. I will have to look into that.

I'd be interested in trying one of those out.

Unfortunately, thats just how they act. Both are lurkers, and will come out to beg for food, but often they are just content to sit around on their fat stomachs waiting for their next meal. Hey, that sounds just like me! But as you probably already know, each puffer has a very distinctive personality. You may end up with one very active puffer and one sedentary one.

Care for them is exactly the same with the exception of housing requirements. Tetraodon cochinchensis(Fang's Puffer) only reaches 4 inches or so, and is very territorial, whereas a Tetraodon turgidus(Brown Puffer) reaches 8 inches and needs more floorspace when fully mature. I would keep them in optimum conditions with lots of hiding spots, broken lines of sight(the wistera that you have will do a good job of that) and adequate floorspace in hopes that they will settle down. THen you'll be able to get a positive ID. Just going on a hunch though, I'd say that they are Tetraodon turgidus. I've only seen a couple healthy Fang's puffers at Pisces. Here is a pic that I took of one of 'em Those circular spots are bitemarks as Jonah identified. Maybe a little bit of Melafix will help in healing them a bit faster, but meanwhile, just keep an eye on them for signs of infection.

6 DPs, 2 males & 4 females. 5 amano shrimp. 2 rogue khuli loaches which I would like to remove, but haven't been bothered to do so. I've heard that placing a small section of pipe closed at one end with some food inside will coax them in eventually. Wake up the next morning and just cap the pipe quickly to contain the loaches. I am wary of adding more DPs, as they seem to use their space fully. Perhaps if I introduced a couple more docile adults, it would work out, but that will be an activity best left till I finish setting up my 90g brackish

I've had this tank going for quite some time. I recently added wisteria and the DPs seem to be loving it. They take refuge inside their little own forest. These pics were taken when I got ahold of a digital camera at xmas. I had to flip their lights on to snap the pics. As a consequence, I woke most of them up and its quite visible by the one DP's very pale colouration. It was looking at me saying, "Turn the damn light off so I can go back to bed". CO2 and ferts were started a couple weeks ago in hopes that the various crypts in the front will finally fill in. A lighting upgrade is in the works to provide 3wpg. Enjoy!

Well in this case, the alarm was my sister who is visiting me over the holidays. Around 1:00 AM, she heard some dripping and water running. She turned the light on to make sure the cat wasn't getting into trouble, or causing some trouble of his own. All you cat owners probably know what I mean She immediately came to wake me up. Anyhow, it was not the cat. It was my 45g apple snail farm(purple Bridgesii).... leaking! I checked the edges to see if it was just leaking out of one of the silicone joints. They were dry. I started moving the snails to another tank, and moved my filter over as I was draining the water from the broken tank. For some reason, the bottom broke!! Cracked right through the bottom on one side! I am not sure why, as the tank only contained crushed coral substrate and a few pieces of driftwood. If my sister wasn't staying with me and actually sleeping right beside my tanks, I would have woken up this morning to a very soggy basement, swolen particleboard furniture, and unhappy landlords. I have a water alarm for my 90g with overflow/sump, but never really considered getting them for my other tanks. I believe this incident to be a fluke, but I think buying a couple more alarms would be worth the peace of mind. Food for thought

99.99% sure. I will be heading back there tonight, but as the latin name suggests, T. biocellatus does have these eyespots at the caudal fin. The specimens at Pisces lack these eyespots and further, their dorsal markings are very uniform. F8's usually have some deviation and squiggly lines rather than perfect 8's all the time. I double-checked Dr Ebert's book to see what juvenile ceylons look like. At any rate, I will double check as I just adore all puffers in general and could spend hours looking at them

If ottociniclus are out of the question, consider amano shrimp, or cherry red shrimp. Both clean up leftover waste and do an excellent job of keeping the algae in check. I'd suggest maybe trying 1 and if the puffers leave them alone, then get another one. My 6 dwarfs in my 40g have 5 amano shrimp tankmates. They coexist very well.

my 90g has one female BN pleco, and several bridgesii apple snails. My 40g planted tank has 5 amano shrimp. They are the only thing that I can find that effectively cleans java moss and small plants. I had no luck with ottos early on, so I have given up on them. The shrimp make excellent cleaners!

I saw the arrowheads as well on Thursday. They seemed to be in very good condition with an average length of 3 inches. As far as the ceylons go, they have about 30 or so, so they may still have some when you finally do make it down here Fat.

Tetraodon fluviatilis Fairly common misidentification, as their dorsal markings as juveniles are quite similar, but I figured I'd get the word out as I haven't seen these fish very often For those who are interested, living requirements are the same as a Green Spotted Puffer. http://www.thepufferforum.com/articles/puf...introtogsp.html

They did indeed. Thanks!

I live in Calgary. Looking for large rectangular pieces of foam to prefilter my durso standpipe and even larger chunks to stick in my sump baffles. thanks!