What Are These?

[emmettbaby]

Ok so I think my mother's new fish are green spotted puffers. At least, She was told they were, but the store got my corydora species wrong so I'm just wondering what these really are.

I've never had puffers so can somebody point me in the direction of a good post or website that I can look at so I can read up on them?

The Puffers

 

[Davo86]

They are Green Spotted puffers (Tetraodon nigroviridis)

 

[emmettbaby]

Thank you! So here's my next question. When I bought these, they were in a freshwater tank. I'm pretty positive that they were captive bred so it possible that they have been acclimated to freshwater?

 

[Davo86]

Thank you! So here's my next question. When I bought these, they were in a freshwater tank. I'm pretty positive that they were captive bred so it possible that they have been acclimated to freshwater?

Although it is possible they were captive bred if you brought them from a LFS then I would highly doubt it, I'm pretty sure they require brackish conditions to breed so the young would have been born in brackish conditions, and therefore will ideally need these conditions as a minimum, brackish Puffers kept in freshwater longterm rarely do well

 

[emmettbaby]

Okay, I see. So, is there any post or website that can tell me how to best convert my tank?

 

[TheHolding]

Okay, I see. So, is there any post or website that can tell me how to best convert my tank?

Hi Emmettbaby, it's pretty easy to convert your tank to a brackish setup as you have live fish you want to do it slowly.

The best way is to increase the salinity when doing water changes buy some marine salt and a hydrometer - add marine salt to the bucket of new water and mix to you get the desired salinity which you can measure with the hydrometer.

As they are currently in fresh water I would increase by .002 monthly.

If they are small jueveniles they won't need strong salinity just yet, my GSP's are 4cm's long and I have them in a salinity of 1.004 I hav only had them just over a week bit they seem very active and happy.

Make sure you do water changes and add salt to the water every week maintain the salinity even when your not increasing the salt - you don't want it to drop - make sure you also add tap water safe solution and make sure temp of new water is similar to that of the tank.

You won't need anything special like a skimmer for low salinity brackish set up but you will need good filtration, puffers are messy eaters my puffers are very messy!