New Puffs :d

[DarkEntity]

Well...went into my local place for Apistos, Killies and a pair of Nanochromis Nudiceps....and as per bloody usual came home with something completly different.

A Pair of Fig8 Puffers

Now i was advised they were in fresh water, but later found them to have been in Brackish! So i raised the tank in the house from fresh to Brackish over 5 hours and this morning its sitting at 1.005/1.006 which is fine. The Puffers are in the tank and zooming about the tank like nutters.

Im hoping i havent killed my filter bacteria...fingers crossed. My main question is whats the easiest and quickest way to measure the marine salt to give a 1.005 SG as last night while mixing in the buckets it was sorta guess work.

anyway onto a couple of pics

 

[nmonks]

It's difficult to measure specific gravity without a hydrometer. But, if you know the temperature of the water and weigh the salt, it is possible to make a reasonable estimate. There's some mathematics involved, but if you want to skip that, download my Brack Calc application and use that instead. Move the sliders for the temperature you have and the specific gravity/salinity you want, and it will work out the weight of salt needed.

SG 1.005 at 25 C is 8.9 grammes per litre, by the way.

Now, in the real world, you can't get a very accurate estimate. Once the box of salt is opened, it absorbs moisture, so over time each gramme of salt mix becomes a certain percentage of water as well as salt, so the actual salinity produced by each gramme of salt mix goes down. The error is small, and well within the tolerances of brackish water fish (and filter bacteria) but it is significant for marines and corals, which is why this "weighing" method isn't used in the marine side of the hobby.

Cheers, Neale

 

[severum boy]

Lovely piece of prawn that!
Very cute, better to buy something cool that you diddent expect than something boring that you planned for!

 

[Maximus]

Puffers rule 8)


Maximus

 

[DiscusAngel]

nice puffers!!!

what size tank are they in ?

Cona

 

[DarkEntity]

The 2 Puffers are about 2cm including tail lol so they are tiny

and are currently growing out in a 65litre, Aqua One tank with an Eheim Ecco 2232 external canister.

 

[rob newland]

cool
They are eating already which is a good sign
One thing i have learned to watch out for with mine is jumping
so i weigh down the condensation tray on top, until i can get something thicker he wont be able to lift off.
good luck
rob

 

[DarkEntity]

Well the tank has stabalised at 1.004 so thats good, ill just do weekly water changes and raise it to 1.006 or do you think 1.004 will be fine for these chaps

 

[BiffMalawi]

0.004 is fine. Unless you are measuring carefully you are probably going to flucutuate around anyway. I aim at 0.005 but sometimes it is alitlle less sometimes a little more.

 

[Fella]

0.004 is fine. Unless you are measuring carefully you are probably going to flucutuate around anyway. I aim at 0.005 but sometimes it is alitlle less sometimes a little more.

0.004 would be too low. Surely you'd mean 1.004?

 

[DarkEntity]

ive been mixing some water overnight for awater change, and ive got that at around 1.005.

got another piccy last night lol

 

[matt295]

they are adorable yeah i think you mean 1.004 too becasue 0.004 is way low right

 

[trunks]

Your F8s have beautiful markings.

Make sure you monitor the Ammonia/Nitrite very closely for the first ~month. Their is a good chance your nitrifying bacteria did not survive the sg change, and the puffers do not tolerate ammonia well. (typically you should not raise sq more than .002 per week)

 

[DarkEntity]

You can do it safely in a day, have a read of Neale Monks drip method. Obviously ideally id have liked to take more time, but duff info didnt help lol

 

[trunks]

You can do it safely in a day, have a read of Neale Monks drip method. Obviously ideally id have liked to take more time, but duff info didnt help lol

I assume this is the quote from Neale you're speaking about?

"The problem with focusing on acclimating fishes to different salinities is that you miss the real problem. When you change the salinity in an aquarium, it is the *filter bacteria* that suffer, not the fish. Changing the salinity from freshwater to SG 1.005 is fine, but above that the filter bacteria die. So the tank begins cycling again. However slowly you make the change, because the bacteria aren't adapting but dying off and being replaced by something else, you have to cycle the tank once the critical threshold of salinity is reached. Below SG 1.005 there aren't any salt-tolerant bacteria, and above it the freshwater ones will be dying off rapidly. The safety zone where both bacteria will be functioning, if there is one, is small.
Really, the best option is to move the sensitive brackish water fish to the quarantine tank, raise the salinity in the brackish water tank to where you want it, and cycle the tank with, say, black mollies.
Mollies are bullet-proof in brackish water and make excellent cycling fish. Once the tank is cycled, move the puffer (or moray eel, or whatever) out of the quarantine tank and into the brackish water via the drip method in a bucket. Problem solved, with no stress on the delicate fish."

I was only warning you based on my personal experience. I had a complete cycle after changing my freshwater tank to brackish (1.005 in 1 water change). Maybe you won't have any problems, but I would still be watching my water parameters closely.