Pea Puffer Tank Maintenance

[ogelthorpe]

Hello everyone,
I have a few questions about tank maintenance for my Fluval Flex with 3 Pea Puffers. Any help would be greatly appreciated:

1. How often should I gravel vac the substrate (gravel substrate)? Once per week? I've had the puffers in for almost a week and have been testing my water every day and it's perfect (0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, less than 5ppm nitrate as I have some nice algae growing on my spiderwood in particular that's eating up nitrates.
2. I don't have any live plants but have large dense marineland fake bamboo plant, spiderwood and seriyu stone. Should I remove all those items before doing the gravel vac?
3. The pea puffers are juveniles and very small. Should I remove them from the tank while doing the gravel vac?
4. How often should I clean the filter, pump and media? I understand this stuff should be cleaned in drained tank water in a bucket to preserve beneficial bacteria as well.
5. Thinking that water changes should be once per week and about 25% - would that be ok?

Thanks again for any help as I'm new at this! Things are going great so far though!

 

[Rocky998]

Hello everyone,
I have a few questions about tank maintenance for my Fluval Flex with 3 Pea Puffers. Any help would be greatly appreciated:

1. How often should I gravel vac the substrate (gravel substrate)? Once per week? I've had the puffers in for almost a week and have been testing my water every day and it's perfect (0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, less than 5ppm nitrate as I have some nice algae growing on my spiderwood in particular that's eating up nitrates.
2. I don't have any live plants but have large dense marineland fake bamboo plant, spiderwood and seriyu stone. Should I remove all those items before doing the gravel vac?
3. The pea puffers are juveniles and very small. Should I remove them from the tank while doing the gravel vac?
4. How often should I clean the filter, pump and media? I understand this stuff should be cleaned in drained tank water in a bucket to preserve beneficial bacteria as well.
5. Thinking that water changes should be once per week and about 25% - would that be ok?

Thanks again for any help as I'm new at this! Things are going great so far though!

1) You don't habe to do a deep gravel vac weekly... Just do it when you notice a build up of debris and other things. But what you can do weekly is spot clean the surface of the sand and not go into the substrate... Just trace the surface.

2) Unless you have had something major to the tank happen, don't remove the decor. You can easily go around it with the siphon. Anything under that would he a pain to clean and is best left there imo.

3) You do not have to remove the pufferfish. They will be perfectly fine as long as you watch them and make sure they are not going to get sucked up. I watch my fish all the time when doing a water change...

4) I personally dont clean it until the filter seems clogged or its been more than 2 months with no rinse in tank water...

5) 25% weekly is perfect and will be just fine!

Hope I was able to help!

 

[ogelthorpe]

Awesome! Thanks!!

 

[Circus]

With the pea puffers, if you are feeding them live snails you might have to do larger water changes occasionally. They cannot always get all of the snail meat out of the shell, and this can cause ammonia spikes if there are not any live plants to take up ammonia. It is just something to keep an eye on.

 

[jams]

You have gotten some sound advice. I have a duo of Indian Dwarf Pea Puffer (Carinotetraodon travancoricus). Picked them up about 6 months ago, originally they were in a 20 Long but I had a hard time finding them, since moved to a 10g. I choose to do a 40-50% water change weekly, along with a surface vacuum of the sand.
Here are a couple of pics..



Good Luck!