How Many Dwarf Puffers For A Newbie?

[soritan]

I have two empty tanks right now, and I need to start actually deciding on fish soon.

Tank #1 is a 10gal, which is in the middle of a fishless cycle. I have a hydra infestation, and all the cures for hydra seem as though they'll uncycle my tank.

Tank #2 is a 5gal, which is almost completely empty, and I set it up yesterday.

I am extremely interested in Dwarf Puffers, Bettas, African Dwarf Frogs, and Ghost Shrimp -- not all in the same tank, naturally. I will probably dedicate 1 tank to the bettas, adfs, and ghosties, and the other will be a Dwarf Puffer species tank.

Do you think that a newbie would be better off with a single dwarf puffer, or three/four dwarf puffers? Oh, and if I do wind up electing to get myself a single DP, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'll put him in the 5gal. The current in my 10gal tank is quite strong, and adfs and bettas aren't strong swimmers.

The 10gal is fairly heavily planted, has 4wpg lighting.
The 5gal is completely empty, as in, not even substrate. I haven't started to put things in it, because I'd like to decide on my fish situation first, you know?

 

[yvez9]

your plan for the 5 gallon with betta, frogs and shrimps sounds quite good.

i would setup the planted 10 gallon for one dwarf puffer to avoid issues, especially sicne you would have nowhere to rehome a second puffer if things went wrong!

 

[emma12321]

Hi,

It's recommended that you keep one dwarf puffer per 5 gallons so in theory you could keep 2 in the 10 gal if heavily planted, it all depends on the personality of the individual fish, it's not recommended to keep any other fish with them as they are fin nippers. If you got 2 that don't get along you could always get a tank divider for the 10 gal.

Emma

 

[soritan]

Well, I've heard about the 5gal rule, and I've heard of the 3gal rule.

After much research, I think the gal per fish rule has more to do with territory than anything else. In other words, if you put 3 fish in an empty tank, they'll likely fight as they've nowhere to hide. My tank is fairly heavily planted, and the fish my lps sells are juvies.

Sooo, I think, in my particular situation, it's almost a matter of preference.

I haven't decided yet. I think if I do decide to opt for the more lenient rule, because of my heavy planting situation, that I won't exceed 3 DPs in my 10gal tank. I'll try for 2 females and 1 male.

On the other hand, I may chicken out all together, put my betta in the 10gal, and put this horrible fascination with expensive fish which like to eat live things out of my head.

I'm waffling, right now, especially as I'm receiving conflicting advice from fairly well qualified people. Everyone is advising me to put the puffers in the 10gal -- which I think is good advice -- but everyone is also giving me different numbers.

I like solitary fish in their setting, but for DPs, because they are so small, it's harder to talk myself into just a single fish than it normally is. Normally, I'm all for a single fish in an aquarium. I think it's striking.

I'll ponder and research more. When in doubt, research more, right? I always say, if one has the internet, ignorance is not a valid excuse.

 

[Erised]

Rather than answer your question, I will give you my experience and let you draw your own opinion =)

I bought 3 dwarf puffers to go into a heavily planted 15G about a year ago. It had rocks all along the back of the tank building up caves till about half way hight. On top of that + all in front it had plants, so much so that we could hardly see in to actually see the puffers.

It very soon became clear that 1 of the male puffers was very dominant and kept chasing the other 2 around. We figured this was just them settling and kept an eye on it, after a week I noticed my female puffer had bite wounds, and I moved her out into a quaranteen/treating tank. Now my other male was the only one left in the tank with him, so he got chased constantly. We had to move the dominant puffer out.

Unfortunatly, I didn't think about the mirrored back in the new 5G we moved him into doing him damage, and he stressed himself to death by attacking his reflection Something I'll never forgive myself for ... should have thought of it before and realised it quicker.

This left me with 2 puffers, who before got along quite well. But when moving them back together (after re-doing the tank to change territory) they too started causing problems. Not seriously, and it didn't seem to be more than just chasing eachother, so we left it. After about 7 months, it got worse. The male just kept chasing her constantly now, untill the point where the female would never come out of hiding again. Having run out of spare tanks by now, we divided the tank. I have no clue how, but they managed to find their way through the divider and swim whichever side they wanted to be on anyway. Now however, when the female got chased, she simply went through the divider and lost the male. All was fine =)

This worked nicely, untill 1 evening I got up and couldn't find my little female anywhere, I got my boyfriend up, and he found that the divider had somehow shifted, and she'd gotten stuck inbetween divider and filter. I cried my eyes out and will never use a divider again. She was and still is my favourite fish, and I'll miss her forever.

Personally, I think 1 dwarf puffer will give you as much love and personality as 3 of them will, and I wouldn't take the risk of having to go through what I went through ever again.

--Edit--

Edited to let you know that I do absolutely love my dwarf puffer to pieces, and do plan on getting more in the future. But they'll all have their own 5 or 10G tank then

 

[soritan]

Honestly, last night, I suddenly became exhasuted. Maybe if I can't even handle all the constant reading before I get the DPs, I shouldn't get them at all. I mostly replied on this thread again this time, so that newbies will know that every infatuation shouldn't lead to an instant purchase.

I really do like them. Considerably. I'm fascinated to death with them, I did gobs of research on them for at least a month, daily, looking up scraps of info. Doing searches on this forum and that. Maybe I'm just going through information overload.

I feel I just want some pretty fish to look at, now.