ooooooohhhh

[hellohefalump]

I found one for £8... me want! diddy little baby one, I've got a spare tank...

 

[dulce]

ahhh i have 2 they are brilliant, such little devils though they try to bite me when i put my hand in, i have slate caves which they like hiding in !

 

[Pufferpunk]

They grow to around 8" & will eventually like a 40g tank.

 

[hellohefalump]

yep I've got a spare tank that big... now... the dilema is this:

I don't have an RO unit, although mum said she'd get one for me for Christmas.
At the moment I'm filling Spud's tank with water from a local pond because the tap water is terrible. If I had the dragon, I'd then have to fill two tanks with it and that's a lot of carrying of water and a bit of a mission. BUT I could buy RO water regularly from the LFS, but that would entail enlisting my boyfriend to be incredubilty kind (which might piss him off after a while) and drive me to the fish shop and back every week or twice...

I'm very low on money at the moment. Do dragons like sand? I have a whole bucket of gravel/laterite which is spare but no sand and I can't really afford it without jepodising my rent.

Whenever I set up a new tank I always pump way too much money into it - this one would be:
plants, ro water, fish, sand, wood and rocks and stuff.

I'm thinking he'll eat the same as Spud (suvatti)? cockles, mussels, prawns etc?

 

[SirMinion]

Ok, here's a few points about tetraodon palembangensis, The Dragon Puffer, also called the Humpback Puffer, the King Kong Puffer and the Real Palembang Puffer .

• Yes, they prefer sand and may like to burrow (ours don't but I know someone who has one that spends his whole time buried)
• They are lurkers, so need cover in which to lurk such as plants and caves (flowerpots)
  They hunt by ambush, grabbing anything edible that passes them as they skulk in their lair. They are able to change colour in order to blend in better to their enviroment.
• They're not keen on bright lights, so any plants you have will need to be happy in moderate lights (we're using Crypts)
• They can be tricky to feed at first, as they will not search for food and will only eat food that moves in front of them. Simple with live food that will come to them, but frozen foods they may need to be hand fed on a feeding stick so that the food can be wriggled in front of the puffer.
  As the fish gets used to the type of food, just dropping it in front of his face will usually suffice.
• Ours eat:
  • Gut-loaded live river shrimp
  • live mealworms
  • live waxworms
  • live crickets
  • live earthworms
  • live jumbo bloodworms
  • live pond snails
  • frozen bloodworm
  • frozen mussel
  • frozen cockle
  • frozen prawns (both peeled and in-the-shell)
  • frozen whitebait
• As PufferPunk said, they grow up to eight inches but do so VERY slowly. We've had ours for well over a year now and they've barely added an inch in length (compare that to our Fahaka puffer who grew 10 inches in 8 months)

Good luck!

 

[Bloo]

Ahhh how gorgeous are they SirM ! I can definitely see the attraction.

£8 might be insignificant, but as you say it will cost a lot more in water supplies and such. Though choice - glad it's not mine I know for a fact my bf wouldn't be too pleased to drive me to the shop every week. Good luck !

 

[Sadie]

Hmm....perhaps you could borrow money to buy an RO unit? If not, how about trying to arrange a weekly delivery of water with the LFS? It'd save your bf getting annoyed!

 

[mbhw]

Nothing personal, but if you can't afford to care for the animal, don't buy it. As far as an RO unit is concerned, don't go out for a weekend or two and that should cover the cost, they aren't cheap but aren't so expensive as to be unreachable. Good luck

 

[hellohefalump]

Nothing personal, but if you can't afford to care for the animal, don't buy it. As far as an RO unit is concerned, don't go out for a weekend or two and that should cover the cost, they aren't cheap but aren't so expensive as to be unreachable. Good luck

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lol i never go out anyway!

 

[hellohefalump]

i got an extra day's half pay teaching job this week! that should pay for it... or the sand and initial ro water anyway... I'm soooo tempted.

 

[Pufferpunk]

RO water is not recommended for FW fish.

 

[hellohefalump]

why not? *curious*

 

[Kopix Nation]

Those things look viscous....me like viscous...but I am just going to settle for a F8 puffer for now.

claire

 

[SirMinion]

Those things look viscous

[snapback]906552[/snapback]​

Viscous? I couldn't honestly describe them as viscous because viscous means "thick and sticky".
However, they can be quite vicious at times.

 

[Pufferpunk]

RO water is not recommended for FW fish.

The biggest issue is simple cost and waste of water. Unless the water is non-potable, there is rarely value in using RO other than for breeding blackwater fish whose eggs cannot function with much Ca++/Mg++ in the water. RO or RODI is too low in TDS for most fish, their kidneys and gills have to work too hard to maintain their internal osmolarity where it should be. Plus, without buffering in the water, the bacteria responsible for nitrification cannot survive, much less function. The pH in such tanks will be all over the ballpark, and mostly very acid - then at water change with short-term buffers added, it jumps up and then crashes again. And the nitrogen metabolites will be rollercoastering as well. The fish do not read the pH, but the bacterial compnents of the tanks do. So RO-Right or Equilibrium has to be used to restore what was removed by the RO/DI process. Practical? No. Possible? For a chemist or physiologist, certainly. For the average hobbyist with no knowledge of water chemistry and buffering, no info at all on fish physiology and all the energy the fish have to expend to keep their bodies functioning, it is a prescription for increasing their problems, not reducing them. In my life in the hobby, I have never known anyone other than a scientist to operate RODI tanks without major problems and or major expense (largely completely without justification). (Written by Robert T Ricketts)

~PP