My Boyfriend Has Fallen In Love With A Figure 8...

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Lizi_angelfish

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Cycling a tank at the moment having been out of fishkeeping for 4 years or so during uni.

So me and my boyfriend decided to get a 60 litre tank and so I'm trying to get some ideas for fish to stock. As with anything, what I would like is very different to what my boyfriend likes... We went to an aquatic shop yesterday and he fell in love with the idea of a figure 8 puffer. I wasn't mad on the idea, but if there was a robust enough tankmate e.g. goby bumblebee or blue neon, or other colourful something then I'd be equally happy with this!

From my initial reading about them, it seems they like live food, something to crunch their teeth on etc. I'd be very happy to do this and get a nice diet for him.

What I really want to know is how realistic is it to be able to set up a brackish tank as newly cycled tank? I don't mind some hard work and putting the hours in, it's more important to me that I don't end up killing anything (and maybe that it doesn't cost loads more than the usual running/set up that I've done in the past).

Thanks in advance!
 
So me and my boyfriend decided to get a 60 litre tank and so I'm trying to get some ideas for fish to stock. As with anything, what I would like is very different to what my boyfriend likes... We went to an aquatic shop yesterday and he fell in love with the idea of a figure 8 puffer. I wasn't mad on the idea, but if there was a robust enough tankmate e.g. goby bumblebee or blue neon, or other colourful something then I'd be equally happy with this!
Apart from Bumblebee Gobies, few, if any fish seem to be reliable companions. Some fish get nipped by them, while bigger or more aggressive fish harm the Figure-8s, which for all their punch are still quite small, slow-moving fish.

From my initial reading about them, it seems they like live food, something to crunch their teeth on etc. I'd be very happy to do this and get a nice diet for him.
Frozen (rather than freeze-dried) foods make a good staple, as will suitably small bits of seafood (especially cockles, which are thiaminase free, as opposed to the less healthy prawns and mussels commonly recommended and best used as treats once or twice a week). Snails are good for their teeth, but Figure-8s aren't especially prone to overgrown teeth (they're probably insectivores in the wild) and in any case the crunchy food technique hardly ever works by itself.

What I really want to know is how realistic is it to be able to set up a brackish tank as newly cycled tank? I don't mind some hard work and putting the hours in, it's more important to me that I don't end up killing anything (and maybe that it doesn't cost loads more than the usual running/set up that I've done in the past).
The sodium chloride in marine salt mix reduces the toxicity of nitrite and nitrate, so to some degree if maintained at SG 1.005 you'd have more of a "safety zone" with puffers in this aquarium than in a newly-cycled freshwater aquarium. Still, be careful and use your nitrite test kit once or twice a week for the first month or so to make sure everything is working properly and take care not to overfeed.

Cheers, Neale
 

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