lmsmith

My puffers are kinda trained. They swim through hoops, and I've trained them to swim into containers in the tank so I can move them with minimal stress. They come to the front when I tap twice on the glass, and when I tap once, they go to their sleeping slots. I've also taught them to handfeed, which sounds easy, but it's actually time consuming. They also let me pet their heads. I don't want to teach them to jump because I don't want them to accidently jump out of the tank. By all means, train your fish. They enjoy it. It gives them something to do, and keeps them mentally interested.

Where do you go??

I use the JBL fert balls, I just kinda push them in randomly around the bottom and I'm not sure the plants grow any faster, but their roots all grow big and they stay planted, and I think they are nicer colours too.

They look just like guppies to me!

A day care centre in Wanganui. I thought the name was fitting.

I've seen them too. It makes me laugh inside 'I buy houses' - "oh, really, do you? That's nice"

96WPM Accuracy: 95% It was really hard to stop myself correcting. I found the baseball one the easiest, although I really don't care about the American Association of the Joint Committee or whatever it is. I was typing on my laptop in bed, so I'm pretty pleased with that. When I'm typing stuff I know my typing speed is about 120 words per min, which is good, it means I can keep up in lectures!

What are you feeding?

What are the dimentions? 90cm is 3 ft, so it must be pretty tall and deep to be 170l?

Freshwater puffers live in rivers, and sometimes come into estuaries. They do benefit from a small amount of marine salt in their water from time to time. If you are going to do this, get a refractometer so you can measure the salinity or don't bother. They can't be fed flakes. Well, they can, and some will eat them, but puffers need a high protein diet (they eat meat almost exclusively) so you're better off feeding them mussels, crab and snails. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=38614 This thread is a good start - not all of the info will be specific to FW puffers, but feeding and other requirements are still similar. Contrary to popular belief, if you introduce puffers to an established tank and choose healthy fish, worm them once you get them and feed them well, remembering to give them water changes every week, you shouldn't have a problem with them. Just remember, they might eat all your other fish.

Mine never liked feeder fish. They just wouldn't chase them. In the wild, they eat crustaceans like shellfish and crab, not fish.

Supermarket, in the seafood section. I'll post a pic if you want.

What sort of filter were you using?

When I first saw this topic, I was concerned that you were going to let the fish flap around on the bottom. Glad to see there's water in it!

Apparenly that's the reason why they can't handle copper. Whatever the reason for their sensitivity, copper is still my guess.

Bunnings have them, they're around the $100 mark I think. I thought they looked pretty reasonable and it was a good price.

Bloodworm has very little nutritional value. Feed it only as a treat. Buy a pack of frozen seafood mix, there are mussels, octopus, clams, crabs etc in a pack for about $4. For dwarfs, cut the peices into about 1cm cubes. Get some baby tongs and hand feed them, it's awesome when they come to you for food. You'll need 1cm cubes because they spit out about 1/2 of what they eat, so make sure to syphon the bottom regularly. Having something meaty for them to bite into also helps with their teeth. Slaters are another good option, they walk around underwater and they love chasing them down. Only feed them until their tummies get rounded. Feed them 6 days, then miss a day until they are 6-9m old, then feed them every second day or third day after that. Puffers are prone to overeating, so don't let them beg you for food! If you are concerned their teeth are getting too long, feed all of their food on top of a rock, they grind down their teeth when they pick up the food.

Puffers have no gill coverings, so are very susceptible to ammonia as others have previously said. They also cannot cope with nitrate, copper or chlorine. That means that you need to make sure that your water has been sitting for at least 24hrs before introducing them, and that NO copper has been used to medicate your fish. I would suggest that you have probably used a copper based medication that has been absorbed into your substrate and decorations and is now leaching into the water. You should always drip acclimitise puffers and other fish that don't have gill coverings over an hour or more because they can deal with changes in water chemistry better over an extended period.

I'm not too concerned about breeding them right now or anything, but I would like to know if I should expect some more fighting between them as they get older; right now they live in the same cave and hang out together all the time; I'd prefer that they stay friends that have to separate them or move them to a big tank to stop the fighting.

To combat that, I just haven't changed water all winter. Well, thats not true; my planted tank I just top up, the cichlid tank I have to change about 20% every 2 weeks but only because there is over 200 fish in a 3ft tank. They keep making babies and not eating them...

Wow, how do they get them to stay still to take photos??? After looking at so many over and over again, some of them start looking so silly; the black polka dot ones make me laugh. I want one.

It was apparently felt in Wellington. I've seen reports from 6.6 - 8.6, so who knows!

http://s400.photobucket.com/albums/pp88/laurenmariesmith/L270/ Alrighty, there's all the pics I have of them. Thanks in advance; they look the same to me...

Yeah, my whole family got it too. Someone from Dads work was on that initial flight, so we were some of the first in Welly to get it. Dad has it the worse, but he has quite bad asthma too. I've recovered, as has everyone else but dad, but I went from totally fine at work to in bed vomiting in an hour flat.

I couldn't hold them upside down. They kept squirming when I tried to pick them up and I think it was pretty stressful for all three of us. I'm just uploading them all to photobucket now, I'll put them in a folder then post the folder link here. I'm not sure how much it'll help though, I didn't get any good pics of their spiny things.