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MyraVan · 10-17-2005, 07:13 AM

I visited a new (to me anyway) fish shop in the area and they had some Amazon puffers (Colomesus asellus). It was love at first sight! I've seen puffers before, and while they are cute, they weren't very active, they would just sort of sit in one place and wiggle thier cute fins, but these ones were zooming all over the place.

I can't have any new tanks now (we just moved house a month ago and still have boxes to unpack, and we want to get the house extended), but it's nice to dream about what I could do after that...

I reaed that these guys have especially fast growing teeth and need lots of snails. That wouldn't be a problem as I have a planted tank with lots of small pest snails, waiting to be harvested...

How big a tank would I need for 2 or 3 of them, and some kind of bottom feeder to keep the tank clean?And what kind of bottom feeder could I have? Some resources say these things are OK for a community tank, but I feel that the fish would have to be chosen very well. They had them in with cories in the shop. A cory would be resting on the bottom, and this puffer would come up behind it, the cory would notice, and it would zoom away. I have a pretty good idea of what would happen if it wasn't quite quick enough: these was one cory in the tank who wasn't in good shape: he'd already been a bit injured, and the puffers would coming back for more. I pointed this out to the shop people and they removed the injured cory, probably to give him a quick death: it would be better than being eaten alive by the puffers...

I thought of one bottom feeder that might work with them: gold barbs. These fish are't strictly bottom feeders, but I gather that, like my rosy barbs, they will eat anything that's fallen to the bottom of the tank. And they are fast fish that wouldn't give the puffers a chance.

So, maybe 1/2 dozen gold barbs and 2/3 puffers? Or any beter ideas of something that would work as a bottom feeder?

10-17-2005, 07:13 AM	#1
MyraVan Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Cambridge, UK Posts: 861	dreaming of puffers... I visited a new (to me anyway) fish shop in the area and they had some Amazon puffers (Colomesus asellus). It was love at first sight! I've seen puffers before, and while they are cute, they weren't very active, they would just sort of sit in one place and wiggle thier cute fins, but these ones were zooming all over the place. I can't have any new tanks now (we just moved house a month ago and still have boxes to unpack, and we want to get the house extended), but it's nice to dream about what I could do after that... I reaed that these guys have especially fast growing teeth and need lots of snails. That wouldn't be a problem as I have a planted tank with lots of small pest snails, waiting to be harvested... How big a tank would I need for 2 or 3 of them, and some kind of bottom feeder to keep the tank clean?And what kind of bottom feeder could I have? Some resources say these things are OK for a community tank, but I feel that the fish would have to be chosen very well. They had them in with cories in the shop. A cory would be resting on the bottom, and this puffer would come up behind it, the cory would notice, and it would zoom away. I have a pretty good idea of what would happen if it wasn't quite quick enough: these was one cory in the tank who wasn't in good shape: he'd already been a bit injured, and the puffers would coming back for more. I pointed this out to the shop people and they removed the injured cory, probably to give him a quick death: it would be better than being eaten alive by the puffers... I thought of one bottom feeder that might work with them: gold barbs. These fish are't strictly bottom feeders, but I gather that, like my rosy barbs, they will eat anything that's fallen to the bottom of the tank. And they are fast fish that wouldn't give the puffers a chance. So, maybe 1/2 dozen gold barbs and 2/3 puffers? Or any beter ideas of something that would work as a bottom feeder?