My puffer!!

[bstier]

Hey everyone I just recently purchased a "green spotted puffer" for my 10 gallon tank. The one thing that I dont get is that why didn't the pet store tell me that the fish was a brackish water fish? That sort of makes me mad and I was wondering if he will make it in fresh water. Exactly how do you make brackish water? Can I add salt without killing me other fish? Also, after he has been swimming around for a while, it seems that he gets tired and rests on the gravel for a minute or two, then he gets back to swimming. Is this normal? Im confused, but my fish is a cutey!
I want to give him the best. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Below is a picture of my little guy!
My spotted puffer

O yea, a friend of mine has the exact same fish from the same store, but his fish eats smaller tetras and what not. I put some really small guys in my tank but he wont go after them. The smaller fish are finally starting to swim near the bottom of the tank so maybe he will try...

 

[CFC]

GSP's will be ok in freshwater for a short while but it will need to go into a brackish tank as soon as possible, to make bracish water add 1 tablespoon of marine salt to each 2 1/2 gallons (10 litres) of water.

What fish are you keeping your GSP with? GSP's are a very aggressive species of puffer and will make short work of most other fish, they are best kept alone or with fish that are able to look after themselves.

 

[ryan]

Nice little puffer you have there.

Good Luck with him.

 

[bstier]

It's weird because the pet store probably just had him in a freshwater tank right? I have a tiger barb, a "sucker" fish (plocostamas or something), and then these 2 fish that are the same species but one is black and one is orange. They were sort of some cheap fish just to accomadate the puffer.

My tank

 

[Bradley]

Sorry, i'm not much help here.....


This kind of post is seen as spamming, please only post if you have something to say not just to increase your post count

 

[Pufferpack]

Hi bstier

The reason your lfs didn't tell you is probably because they don't know. Unfortunately there seems to be a marked lack of knowledge in a lot of lfs when it comes to proper care of Puffers.
As CFC mentioned, the GSP's are found in FW as babies, but as they mature they need to move to BW and seem to do best in the higher end of the brackish scale (1.015-1.020) right up to full marine (1.025 or higher) once they are fully mature. To be sure about your salt content (specific gravity) you need to buy a hydrometer, they are available at most lfs, and relatively cheap. When converting from FW to BW, I have read that you should only increase the Sg about .002/week (never did it myself, so not much help there I'm afraid)
As for the current tankmates, I believe the pleco (sucker fish) will not survive BW, the Tiger Barb (looks like a clown Loach in the picture?) is also FW, the fish just underneath the puffer in the pic looks like a Zebra Danio - FW again, and the black fish looks like a black Molly, if so it will do well in a BW tank, but as the GSP matures it will probably kill the molly. I don't see the Orange fish in the pic, but odds are it is a molly as well.
One last piece of bad news, a 10 gal tank is too small to house a GSP permanently, you will need a 20 or 30 gal tank to house it properly.

Other than that....Very nice little puffer, good pics

 

[bstier]

Yea im pretty sure the orange one and the black one are the same species. They always swim together but I have a few more questions. Whenever the orange fish goes into the little reef thing, the black fish always "annoys" the puffer. Is this going to stress him out too much? Also, I called the pet store and they were like "yea they can live perfectly fine in FW BW and full marine. I wanted to be like..."yea thats not what everyone said on fishforum.net"

And one more thing, do you think he will ever eat those little fish? He seems to like flakes. I think he is just a little shy in the new tank. He seems to be getting a little control in there as time goes on.

 

[billy61788]

its good to know that...i was about to buy a puffer just like that today and now im glad i held off. i figured i should learn more about it before i got it and im glad i waited...at my LFS they have them mized in with tetras and there was one in with some barbs and other normal water fish