MrGibson

Hey sorry for the late response! I actually don’t have any yet. I ran into issues with getting a proper tank going for them on time but I’ve got a 10 gallon tank that’s been maturing for a bit now. I’m hoping to get a pair in early may. Do you have any experience with them? From what I gather they’re fairly straightforward.

Yeah puffer is for sure thoroughly ruled out. I think at this point the best way to narrow down the ID is to grow it out lol

Looking further into this tonight I’m thinking I can maybe say it’s some kind of pupfish, similar to flag fish. The only issue I’m seeing is that most pupfish have truncated caudal fins whereas this appears to have a rounded caudal fin. I guess it’s possible that shape changes with age maybe? so far I think the closest match I’ve gotten is desert pupfish but I don’t believe those are commonly kept, and again the caudal fin is off. And thus the rabbit hole goes deeper.

Flag fish crossed my mind as well, largely from @mountaintoppufferkeeper’s post, but I’m not really sure. I may try to figure out who I’ve bought plants from and see what they think. I’d agree on it not being a puffer at this point. Seems like this is the leading theory at the moment.

@Fish Folki know you’ve worked with a good number of species. You ever seen a fry like this?

I gave up on a gif. Here’s a link to a video. any ideas? The movement of the mouth has me thinking it’s not a puffer. side note, does anyone know the term for fish mouths that extend forward like that? Just curious

Update! It reappeared! I’ll work on getting a gif posted

Appreciate the comparisons. I’m definitely going to try for some video this weekend. Im not certain it’s a puffer but I’m having trouble thinking of anything else that moves like that. I’ve got a new light coming Monday as well so that may help brighten things up for better visibility. I’d say it’s probably around a half inch or so right now but that’s really a guess based on the few glimpse I got of it. I’ll be sure to update if I get any video thanks 🙂

Hey y’all. Tonight while sitting in front of my medaka grow out tank I noticed a little fish along the bottom that I didn’t put in there. I was only able to get some pretty terrible pictures of it. The current theory is it’s maybe a puffer if some sort based on its movement. It stayed near the bottom and slowly moved from spot to spot while moving its eyes in the orbits and picking food off the bottom. It’s hard to tell because it’s so small but it appeared to not be using its tail to swim and was moving very slowly and smoothly. I’m assuming this fish had to have come in as an egg on a plant or something and hatched out in my tank. I’ll attach the pictures I was able to get even though they suck in hopes it can inform some guesses. I’m thinking I may camp out in front of the tank with my dslr and a macro lens for a few hours this weekend to get a better look. If I’m able to I’ll update this thread. @mountaintoppufferkeeper I know you keep and breed some puffers. Any ideas? thanks y’all!

Another update, I took some myriophyllum out of this tank yesterday and some of it had rooted through the mesh and into the soil. It was firmly held in place, but would come lose with some gentle encouragement. I plan to give the rest of the plants a chance to get rooted through and I may add some more species to test out a wider range, but if all continues to go well I’m satisfied I have a solution and I’ll likely be trying some apistos in this tank 🙂

That’s great info to have! I’m testing one of the ideas and it’s going well so far. Here’s the thread where I’m documenting that 🙂 It’s going well so far and it seems like it should work quite well for digging species, even if not entirely necessary for A. Cacatuoides. thanks 🙂

Everything is going well so far. Need to give more time for plants to root. I’ll say that having a barrier under just shy of an inch of soil makes planting a bit of a pain, but it’s doable and if needed a plant weight can come to the rescue. More to come 🙂

Oh gotcha! To further serve your point, I didn’t realize there was an E50 lol

What makes you say it doesn’t exist in the US? I’ve ordered two fluval e100 heaters on Amazon in the last week here in Tennessee.

Got some plants in with more on the way. I decided to do a preliminary test just on the ability of the craft grid to keep the soil in place when the cap was disturbed and it performed well. I used a substrate spatula to very aggressively move the sand and to blow water around across the top of the soil. Some of the soil fines came up but really not much. Certainly much less that we’re I to do it in a standard dirted tank. I think that if the plants are able to root well this will be a viable solution. I may end up putting this to the test with a pair of Apistogramma borellii if I can find an unrelated pair. anyway here’s a picture of the water after my assault on the substrate! I’ll keep testing with different methods of disturbing the cap and report back!