midgetwaiter

A FW sump system isn't going to be any more noisy than a SW system of comparable size, probably quieter actually, no skimmer. The way you are describing the setup is correct, you want to separate the bio balls and floss somehow though. You can build a poor man's drip plate by going to Walmart and getting some 8x11 plastic needlepoint guides and stacking them on top of each other. Does a really good job of spreading the water out over all your bio media and you won't have to pick floss off of your bio balls all the time. IME there is no comparison between a sump driven system and a canister, the sump is much easier to deal with and much less likely to screw up on you. I'll probably never use a canister again, either I'll run a sump or just use HOBs. It's normal to get an air bubble jammed in a canister, rock it back and forth and it should start to clear for you. I remember talking about your slime farm a while back, I'm still not sure what to recommend. I've been messing a bit with the NPT (Natural Planted Tank) concept for the last year or so. The roots of it are basically "take all that fancy gear and chuck it", you rely on the plants as your primary source of bio filtration and use a soil substrate to provide other nutrients for the plants. I don't know if I'm all the way sold yet but I know I swapped one of my puffer tanks over to nothing but floating plants and sponge filters about a year ago and it has been the easiest tank to maintain I have ever had. I get no gunk on the glass, I don't have to screw around with filters, all I do is prune the plants. Only mistake I made was to use java moss in the beginning, now it is all over everything in thick mats and very difficult to get rid of. If you're interested I have some links and stuff. Maybe we should get together for a little demo, I still want to see your Iwasaki bulbs in action.

Do you maybe mean mysis? It's a small fw shrimp, good food. Mice (as in rodent) would be bad.

Oh my, where to start? I really wish that tripod page would die, it is completely incorrect and has been misleading people, causing confusion and argument for years. All of the fish pictured are tetraodon nigroviridis, there is a pretty significant variation in the colour and spot patterns of these fish. t. fluvitalis looks nothing like a nigroviridis and while the schoutedeni might, it is never, ever seen in the aquarium trade. I bet when you bought this fish it was labeled as a "Fresh Water Puffer", some of the local chains persist in this even though they know they are wrong. Maybe the guy at the store told you it was a FW fish or to add a little aquarium salt to the water, he's wrong too. Not your fault but you are going to have to change your plans. Tetraodon nigroviridis, common name Green Spotted Puffer inhabits river deltas and mangrove swamps in the wild. They do spawn up stream in fresh water areas (like salmon) but as they grow they migrate down the rivers and spend most of their adult lives in salt water lagoons. Many other fish do this and are commonly known as brackish water fish, brackish water is what you get when a river and the ocean meet, think of it as sort of saltwater. Many of these fish are sold as fresh water compatible, it's a disgrace. It is important that you replicate this environment in your aquarium, as the fish gets older you need to increase the level of salt in your water until at about 4 or 5 years old you have full strength salt water. You have to use a quality marine salt mix to do this, not regular table or aquarium salt, the "salt" in the ocean is actually a mix of many different minerals. It isn't very complicated but it does restrict the types of fish and plants you can keep in the aquarium with your puffer. You will need a larger tank, while these fish stunt easily they can grow quickly and will require a minimum tank of 30 gallons, the 45 you talk about would be perfect. Move it as soon as you can. It's important that you give your puffer a diet mostly comprised of marine invertebrates like shrimp. Regular prawns from the grocery store are good and krill, squid or blood worms from your LFS can help round it out. Most puffers will never touch prepared foods like flake and pellets. Long term you may or may not have success keeping any tank mates with your puffer. Sometimes it works when they are smaller but usually when the fish hits sexual maturity (size varies at this point) they can and will kill just about anything you try to keep with them. Usually they do best by themselves. I hope this doesn't make you defensive but you really need to figure this stuff out and have a plan. Through no fault of your own you have a completely wrong idea of how to take care of this fish. They make great pets and hopefully you'll have him for a long time, I've had one of mine for a little over 10 years. Here's a good article for you Introduction To Green Spotted Puffers The plan to use the 10 for dwarf puffers is a good one, they stay small and do fairly well in groups. You could keep 4 or 5 in there if you got a bunch of plants (fake or real) for them to hide and play in. They live their whole lives in fresh water. There are a few puffer types around here that can help if you have any questions (me, fatpuffer, pufferpack) or you can visit www.thepufferforum.com whihc is a forum like this devoted to puffers. Edit: Jonah I get distracted for a bit and you just have to beat me to it don't you! I have a reputation to uphold you know. At least we said exactly the same thing, again.

Interesting, I have always thought it needed to be higher.

I misread, thought you had a nitrate problem, sorry. Over dosing some ferts that use ammonium compounds in them can still lead to small nitrite spike as it is consumed by the first stage of biological filter and the second stage can't keep up. This is pretty rare and I doubt it is the problem we have here. I am going on the assumption that this is a newish tank, say less than 6 months. You have run afoul of a mistake common to new hobbyists, you cleaned up too much. I did it, probably just about everyone else here did too. Consider how the biological part of your filtration works. Ammonia from fish waste is consumed by a colony of bacteria that lives on your filter sponge and other surfaces in your tank, they produce nitrite. An entirely different bacteria colony that also inhabits surfaces in the tank consumes this nitrite and releases nitrate that we then dilute through regular water changes. The second bacteria colony takes longer to establish itself and IME is a quite a bit easier to kill off. Every time I have seen somebody with this problem it has happened immediately after they went and gave the filter sponge and bio media a good thorough cleaning and killed off the nitrite eating bacteria. Don't do that. If you have a newer style AC70 it came with 3 filter media components. A sponge to trap waste, which also provides surface for your bacteria colonies, some carbon and a bag of rocks to provide more surface for the bacteria. It is essential that you not over clean these media! The best strategy is to clean them on different schedules, rinse the sponge one week and if it is really gummed up the rocks out the next. My preferred method with these filters is to discard the carbon, stack 2 sponges that can be rotated after cleaning the bottom one and to NEVER touch the bag of rocks. It may take a while for this to fix itself but it will. Using salt (any salt, doesn't matter if it is iodized) at a dose of 1 tsp per 5 gal, any more can harm the plants, will help the fish with the effects of the nitrite. Prime can be used to detoxify nitrite as well, follow the directions. Do water changes as necessary to maintain the nitrite level below 3 ppm but do not eliminate it completely. The bacteria colony will establish itself inside of a few weeks.

That's exactly what I meant, South American Puffers are horrible for tooth growth as well and it's easy to keep thier beaks worn. You don't need to use snails just find something that they like that is crunchy, I suggested my favorite already.

You added either a liquid fertilizer or root tabs of some kind right? That's what did it.

I've been struggling with a way to say this that doesn't make me sound like a jerk but I gave up. I know the sites you are referring to and who wrote them, they're wrong. If you think about it the assertion is absurd, who runs around the wild trimming puffer beaks? Diet is a much better solution to this issue, if you take a proactive approach to this you will find you never need to trim teeth manually. Modestus are not very widely kept but many people have kept South American puffers (including me) for long periods without having to resort to manual dentistry and they are just as bad if not worse with the overgrowth problems. If you get a good growth out of your fahaka you will be looking at a tank in the 100 gal range, preferably something with 2 feet of width to it. A 4ft x 2 ft 120 is perfect.

All of those puffers are fresh water for thier entire lives. I didn't make a comment earlier as I have never had to trim a puffer's beak myself and if you give them the correct diet you never should have to either. I have found that regular mealworms you can buy from a pet store that sells them for reptiles will also help wear the beak down for fish like modestus. Clams and mussels will work well for your Fahaka. You may have to crack a few all the open at first so it gets the idea but after they get used to eating them you can toss them in as is and let it open them up.

A big part of it's natural diet in going to be inverts like shrimp. I'd try using prozen prawns from the grocery store more often.

The watts per gallon rule is flawed in that it does not take the shape of your aquarium into consideration. A tall tank will require more intense light to penetrate the water that a more shallow tank of the same over all water volume. Assuming you have a 48x12x26 style 65 it is a still a fairly deep tank and you will find that the light you are providing is good but not great. Power compact lights would have better penetration. It should work for mid to low light plants though.

Wherever you get them from you need to ship them next day air, that's going to be expensive unless you are doing massive quantity. If you try and ship them from the states you are going to get brokerage charges for sure, that's another $40 minimum right there.

Riverfront has it. 15.99 for the big one, I can't remeber what the little one is.

Scary how fast they grow isn't it, the absolute oposite of most puffer species.

It is a Peckoltia for sure, I haven't been able to narrow it down farther though.

Why the bump?

The vet issue is a tricky one. I've only been keeping herps for a few years but I really jumped in with both feet and had some pretty experienced people to learn from, Tortis among them. I also spent a lot of time at my grandfather and uncle's farms growing up so I have a little bit of practical experience as well. I have access to veterinary texts and can understand almost all of the information in them. I have screwed up pretty bad a couple times too and have learned from it. I've never personally taken a herp to a vet, I just haven't needed to. I have seen scores of my customers come to see us with "the vet just told me x" though and let me tell you, NOT very encouraging. Some are definitely better than others but locally there are a couple real dingbats with vet licences. It's not so much that I won't pay $75 to get my turtle examined. It's that I won't pay $75 to have a vet recommend a vit A shot that stands a decent chance of killing my turtle all on it's own. I also have a real problem with the way vets price some procedures. If you call ahead of time you will be told that the procedure will cost $X and if you ask will be told that price is determined by a table published by the College of Veterinarians every year. That's nice but it's BS. I found when I was looking for a place to neuter my rabbit that the cost varied by over 200% Why if it is set by the same reference is this true? How do I made the decision? IS the cheaper place not doing something important or is the more expensive place doing something extravagant? As for local vets with fish experience? Not any that I am aware of. As a matter of fact it is difficult to find anyone globally with expertise treating fish disease that isn't from a commercial aquaculture background. Erik Johnson is the only one that comes to mind in fact. I agree that the way people diagnose and self medicate with in the aquarium hobby is often disgraceful but I don't see a lot of places for them to get the information and support they need to do it well.

There is some stuff you can use, call Riverfront and ask Wayne to get some for you. Be careful though, you can absorb it throught your skin and knock yourself out too. This can be done without it, the best way is to chase the fish into a bag and pull them out that way, much easier than a net.

No you move them in the bags and set them up in the tubs once you get where you are going. This way you don't have stress about getting the tank setup right away.

Get some Jungle "Bag Buddies" they are little disolvable oxygen tablets, bag the fish and get them into a cooler. Try and have the "tank" setup at the destination ahead of time, much easier to use some rubbermaid tubs or something as a temorary home than trying to setup an aquarium at the destination as part of the move. It would be a good idea to have some air driven sponge filters to use in the tubs, keep them running in the existing tank for a couple weeks then take them along with during the move. It should be enough to keep the fish alive in the tubs until you get the tank sorted out.

I'm having trouble making out exactly what the stuff in the picture is. Is it just soft brown gunk? I think that's probably the case so I'll ask the important question, what are you feeding and how much? Those are some seriously messy fish and I'm going to guess that you are using a pretty fair amount of frsh or frozen food. Without a skimmer that sludge is to be expected, just vacum it out when you do your water changes.

Have you every really asked someone to sex 1cm feeder guppies and then net that particular one out of a 30 gal tank with a thousand other guppies in it? Really? While god knows how many other customers are waiting? Seriously? I don't say this often but in this case, you can keep your 20 cents. -roll-

My favorite would be peeling hillstream loaches off the glass with my credit card, always amusing and perfectly safe if you're careful enough. As far as customers go though "can you pick individual small male guppies out of this tank with a couple thousand in it"? No. "I'd like that ghost shrimp on top of the pile in the back corner under the filter please". Here's a net, I'll be at the till when you're done.

Java fern, if you can't find a big one you like use a few of them, they stick to lava ock real good.

I wonder if they will do away with that wonderful Rena Auto Media Bypass feature. :ph43r: I know lots of people just love these things and I'm not trying to start a flame war or anything but I have never seen another design that bad.