I'm A New Figure 8 Owner!

[TammyLiz]

Hello everyone!
I haven't posted in this forum yet because I haven't had any brackish fish, but I am thrilled to say that is changing! I took a peek into the dwarf puffer tank at my LFS this afternoon and guess what I saw? A teeny tiny little Figure 8 puffer! They didn't even realize he wasn't a dwarf. He didn't look like he was feeling too great and there was another one in there that had died . So I am going to see if he perks up with some salt. It was a tough call because I didn't have a tank ready for him at home but I was afraid if I waited until Friday (my next chance to go), that he might have died, too. The pH was too low for him there and the tank was way overstocked. Plus, no salt.
I want to share everything on here so people with experience can alert me if I do something wrong.
I am putting him into a 2 gallon hex tank that I have empty right now. I have a 10 gallon that I will be able to move him to within a few months, but it is being used temporarily as a quarantine tank. He is so teeny that that 2 gallon tank will almost be roomy for him.
The guy at the LFS said that I could use aquarium salt for him, but I'm thinking I shouldn't trust him since he didn't recognise it was not a dwarf. I'm planning on picking up some marine salt asap and keeping him in freshwater until then. I am using crushed coral for the substrate.
So...am I doing OK?
I do have one question. What is the minimum temperature for this little guy? The heater for this tank can't seem to get the tank over 75F. I will certainly buy another heater if this is too cold.
Can you think of anything else I need to worry about? Anything I should be looking out for behavior-wise?
Thanks!

 

[demonmagus]

I'm sure you need marine salt

 

[Dave Legacy]

How are you going to get this tank cycled fast enough? Figure Eights are fun, enjoy it. My only advice would be that if you get algae bloom maybe toss out the crushed coral sand. I never ever ever have algae in my mangrove swamp tank w/sand substrate but my GSP tank is growing this green hair algae all over the place and I've been told that crushed coral sand because of how poreous it is tends to hold in nutrients.

 

[TammyLiz]

Algae, yuck. I hope that is not an issue. Would the puffer graze on it? And would they eat plants if I added them? I already added java fern but I hear that anubias and vallis also do fine in brackish water, and I could acclimate them as I acclimate the fish. It doesn't matter if they can survive the water if they just get eaten, though.

For filtration in this tank I am using the UGF that came with the tank and I have a mini gravel vacuum to keep that clean. To cycle it I am transfering the filter floss from one of my mature tanks and thought I would just stuff it behind the uptake tube for the UGF. I'm not sure if this will do the trick or not. I could also make a little sponge filter and put the filter floss in there and have both running, but that would be a little more work.

I just put him in the tank a few minutes ago. I took forever acclimating him because it was a big pH change. I put the heater in the bucket so he would stay warm. I was surprised at how quickly that crushed coral shot the pH up. It went right up to 8.4 immediately and I kept removing water and adding it from a mature tank with a pH of 7.0 (clean, good stats), but it wouldn't lower it any lower than 8.2 even after what ammounted to a 50% water change. At least it got rid of the cloudiness from pouring the original water over the crushed coral. Hopefully the pH jump won't be too hard on him since it was over 4 hours. Tomorrow I will begin to add salt if I can find time to stop by the chain pet store.

Comments welcome and appreciated!

 

[fishfishfish]

all of my crushed corel have no effect on ph.its weird

 

[TammyLiz]

all of my crushed corel have no effect on ph.its weird

Thats very weird. Is your water already really hard before adding the coral?

I got the salt today but forgot the hydrometer. Since its totally fresh I'm sure I can't go wrong adding a little salt. How much should I add?

I fed the little guy some freeze dried blood worms and he wouldn't touch them. I was surprised. I guess I'll have to try something else. But I don't have anything else right now.

I noticed when I put him in the tank there was one small white spot on his back, so tiny I almost thought I was imagining it. Today he has been flashing. What should I do? I have Formalin/Malachite green for ich. Should I use that on him and should I use the normal dose? Should I also add melafix to help with his tail, which has been nipped? Puffers seem so different from tropical freshwater. I don't want to use the wrong med so I'm waiting for a reply before I do anything.

Thanks!

 

[nmonks]

Some random thoughts --

Crushed coral will only buffer pH and hardness while it is clean. As soon as the algae and bacteria cover it, it hardly works at all. It can't because the algae/bacteria are 'insulating' the calcium carbonate from the water. So differences in effectiveness can probably be put down to this.

To begin with, you want to add _no more_ than 5 grammes of salt per litre of water (if you're doing ounces and gallons, do the maths!). Full seawater has 35 grammes of salt per litre, so 5 g/l is 16% seawater or about SG 1.004. Any brackish water fish will adapt from freshwater to this salinity within an hour. I've taken mollies from salt to freshwater in an hour, and apparently you can drop scats from freshwater straight into salt water (never tried this though!).

Bloodworms, live or frozen, seem an excellent food for all puffers, though they don't help wear down the teeth.

I wouldn't worry about any slight whitespot or other external problems. Treat if you want (using a brackish safe medicine) but changing the salinity will wallop the parasites pretty effectively. Some people consider puffers to be sensitive to copper-based medicines. This is not my experience, but then I have only kept a few species, so I'd tend to respect the suscpicion and avoid using copper if at all possible. Dipping in full seawater two or three times a day, for 30 to 60 seconds, will also, very effectively, kill external parasites but not harm the fish.

Maturing the filter quickly will be an issue, and puffers are very sensitive to nitrites and ammonia. Note that you CANNOT use standard zeolite ammonia remover in brackish water.

Aquarium (tonic) salt is rubbish. Use real marine mix salt.

75 F (~24 C) is fine, so long as it doesn't drop too low at night or when the room gets colder than normal.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[TammyLiz]

This is great information, Neale. Thank you so much. I am finding it much more difficult to find good information on brackish water on the internet than it is to find info on fresh water. There are a ton of sources that say Figure 8 puffers are fine in freshwater, then they all seem to say "but mine died after a year". Stupid people. Are there any good brackish water websites out there with good information, such as your comment about not using standard zeolite ammonia remover in brackish water. There is no way I would have known that if you hadn't told me, and I wouldn't have thought about it. Luckily I used a water conditioner that is safe for fresh or saltwater, but TBO I didn't check. I'll have to remember to check in the future.

So, whats your favorite brackish website?

I do have marine salt. I figured that I should use approx. .65 oz/gal according to what you said. It should be close enough and I'm going to duck a little below that to be safe until I get a hydrometer. I think I might even go a little slower in respect for the bio filter since I understand that there will be different bacteria in the brackish water. I didn't realize this before so I hope I'm not in trouble having seeded from a freshwater tank. Even a little salt will be better for the little guy compared to the freshwater in the LFS. The LFS has marine tanks, also. Do you think I should request a little something from them to help me seed the tank? I don't know, maybe they would let me borrow a bio ball or something. It might be worth asking if you think it would help. Or I could buy a teeny piece of live rock? I know it would die but would that help the fish if they won't let me borrow a bio ball?

Hopefully this isn't too much to read. Thanks if you take the time.

EDIT: I just tested and ammonia and nitrite are both dead 0. Seeing as it has been 48 hours and the tank is tiny I'm probably fine with the freshwater bacteria.

 

[nmonks]

Hello TammyLiz --

There's debate about when freshwater filter bacteria die and marine ones take over. At SG 1.005 or less, I would assume it's the freshwater bacteria, so using a bit of filter medium from another freshwater tank should be fine. But certainly you could ask for a cup of coral sand from your local store, put it in a bucket, and maybe change the salinity down to brackish over a few hours. Wouldn't do any harm.

Zeolite doesn't work in brackish water for the same reason you recharge zeolite in salty water: salt 'soaks' the ammonia out of the zeolite and into the water. So putting zeolite into a brackish or marine tank does nothing.

The issue with figure-8 puffers is complex: many, many books refer to them as freshwater fish, and at least some scientific resources say the same thing (e.g. Fishbase). A lot of aquarists still believe this to be true, myself included until recently, so don't be too hard on them! A few experience pufferfish keepers have managed to get the word out that despite the fact they are said to be freshwater fish in the wild, in captivity, they do best in brackish. Not high-end brackish, but just slightly brackish.

With brackish, I always opt for stuff like medicines that is marine safe, just to be on the safe side. For pufferfish, if you need to treat for whitespot, find something that is invert safe -- inverts are copper sensitive, too.

My favourite brackish web site is, of course, my own web page, and I am obviously pretty keen on my book! There's some sort of rule here about not posting links to other forums, but let me just say that there is a puffer forum out there, and it has some very good discussions and information. But by and large, brackish stuff doesn't get a lot of coverage. Searching for specific fish, like puffers or mudskippers is usually the best option.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[TammyLiz]

You're right, sorry about that "stupid people" comment. I shouldn't have said that because I AM learning from the experience of others. It's not like I'd be doing so well if I just saw the fish in some estuary and stuck him in my tank, which someone must have done at some point. There had to be a first. I can see that figure 8 keepers are just now realizing their error.

I was apparantly editing my above post while you were posting. I hope you're right about the freshwater bacteria. As I said in my edit, ammonia and nitrite are 0 now, after 48 hours. Even after I added the bloodworms that he didn't eat. I am taking that as a sign that the filter is doing well enough but I will keep an eye on it.

Thanks again. I'll check out your website!

 

[AMS]

apparently you can drop scats from freshwater straight into salt water (never tried this though!)

Ive transfered my scats as well as mollies from freshwater to a high end brackish tank (scats tank was a SG of about 1.015 and mollies were about 1.009) and in about 35 minutes they seemed fine and active. Though the scats were juveniles then, I dont know if it would make a difference in their elder age (I assume so though).

 

[nmonks]

Age shouldn't matter, since these fish naturally migrate between fresh and salt water all the time. However, suddenly taking them from marine to freshwater is apparently much more difficult.

Cheers,

NEale

Ive transfered my scats as well as mollies from freshwater to a high end brackish tank (scats tank was a SG of about 1.015 and mollies were about 1.009) and in about 35 minutes they seemed fine and active. Though the scats were juveniles then, I dont know if it would make a difference in their elder age (I assume so though).

 

[TammyLiz]

OK, well, I was hoping I was done with the water quality type questions, but unfortunately I'm not.
Right now I have an ammonia reading of maybe .1ppm. Its such a little bit but I thought it would be worth mentioning since these guys are so sensitive to it. Nitrites are at 0ppm. I'm not sure if the ammonia reading is because I'm using a freshwater test kit or if it is really there.
The problem is the fish still has what I guess must be ich. Its hard to tell because his belly is pure white, but I think it has a lot of spots judging by the texture. There are more on his back and some on his fins now, too. Poor little guy! I have added .3 oz of salt per gallon, which is almost half the amount nmonks suggested as the maximum amount. I added half that amount at first, and the other half this morning. I also did a partial water change this morning. I hesitate to go up to the full level all at once in respect for the bio filter. However, the ich is messing up my plans. I feel I should either medicate at this point or add the rest of the salt to combat the ich. Advice?

 

[nmonks]

Increase the salinity, if you can. By the time the SG goes above 1.005, the whitespot will be history. Dipping in full seawater is another option, though stressful (if not harmful) for the fish (and perhaps the owner, too!). If you want to medicate, go ahead and do so, just be sure and use a brand safe in fresh AND salt water. Few potions ever say "brackish" on the carton, so look for ones safe in fresh and marine, and you're laughing.

Don't forget to raise the temperature of the aquarium. This speeds up the life cycle of the whitespot: it is critical to appreciate none of the whitespot potions affect the white cysts on the fish, only the swimming stage of the lifecycle.

The rise in nitrites/ammonium is because the filter is adapting to the raised salinity, and the bacterial composition is changing from freshwater to brackish water species. It'll settle down after a few weeks, but in the meantime, be sure not to overfeed, and carry out lots of water changes, perhaps every couple of days, if you can.

Cheers,

Neale