mountaintoppufferkeeper

Id say puffers can be done

I wont say puffers those are a little harder to meet the LFS sales requirement. I would be interesting to see you crush the 1) Congo Tetra 2) Rummynose Tetra 3) Oddball nominee : African Butterfly Fish (floating eggs and would probably need to be moved into an in tank breeder box with a lower water level to get live baby brine etc to hit the mouth of the fry for a few weeks

Just left quarantine - Needs to put on some weight I will add one more feeding on the auto feeder of pellets or sticks if I'm working on conditioning the fish. Sometimes I will utilize repashy type foods since they can kind of sit in there and the fish can feed off of it throughout the day.. Bulking up also sometimes requires me to separate a fish species by gender if they are too focused on "socializing" when in mixed company. I will feed live foods regularly to supplement that dry foods schedule. My live options are limited to the cultures currently running here for adolescent and adult fish are, live baby brine shrimp, white worms, earthworms (small species all the way up to big nightcrawlers), pond snails, Malaysian trumpet, ramshorns, and slightly bigger cultured snails. All of the snails and worms are fed nutritionally dense foods to make them more complete foods for the fish. So far work with daphnia and blackworms seasonally but might eventually break their codes as well. Fry Normally I always put a bit of seasoned mulm'y plant etc in where every fry are going to have some good colonys of micro fauna to eat. I then feed vinegar eels days 1-7, grindal worms days 2-10, live baby brine shrimp days 3-21, whiteworms days 14-45, with prepared foods offered along side live from day 30 on. Picky eaters I offer whatever I have until I find one they will eat. I then offer new foods with the food they will eat to get them used to the concept of it being food. My theory is that eventually they will associate the smell of the new food. Same as leaving quarantine I will feed live here but actively work to get them to recognize prepared foods as food and accept whatever dry foods I want them to eat.

I've see them in batches of blackworms before In my tanks anything with a mouth big enough to fit it sees a leech as a nice meal

Still pao cf palustris mekong river puffers here. My first pao puffer bred, raised, and bred here. Their color and behavior changes are pretty amazing. These two gifs are the same puffer group around the same size. Spawning male above spawning female The whole batch , males and females, in normal coloration feeding on frozen krill

I had a package go missing once from a USPS distribution hub. It was not clear what happened so I reported it directly to the federal law enforcement agency that covers the US postal system The United States Postal Inspection Service. https://www.uspis.gov/report you would be surprised how fast and fully a mail issue can get fixed at a post office when a federal law enforcement agent with very broad authorities and arrest powers starts investigating what happened to your package

Took a fairly decent photo with a female adult palustris. She was looking for some food delivery

@TheSwissAquarist none currently due the the fishroom moves but two palustris pictures from the breeder box a while back

@AllFishNoBrakes nice . I'm always looking at puffers whenever I see any around. @TheSwissAquarist thanks much. Glad thr peas work with the method those redeyes are going the be a challenge.

@Preston John Thanks kindly for the info. 100 is the enjoyment cutoff for me with the Pao puffers. Normally 50 or so works best for my schedule and food setups. I will try the sponge filter strategy for both new species. That method sounds perfect for my tank layouts. .

The two new projects have arrived. Both are egg scatterer puffers. I am a total newbie on that style of puffer breeding. What methods work bets to pull eggs from the egg scattering puffers ? To prep I re-read all the forum content tagged spotted congo and schoutedeni as well as any article in scholar.google which referenced the species. @Preston John you hooked me on the species and lead me to deciding to give them a spot here testing myself on breeding them up here. Tetraodon schoutedeni Spotted congo puffer The unexpected find: Carinotetraodon irrubesco Red tail red eye puffer I didn't really appreciate these until seeing them in person and picking up a group. One of the males One of the hopefully females

I took a "brief" 260 mile 5 hour trip to my local fish store to move some things out and primarily to stock up on a new puffer food for current use and long term culture: A few Mystery snails ... The Pao cf palustris were most appreciative....sharing is caring. This typically what occurs a few days prior to courtship. We will likely get some eggs this week now that they are settled in the self designed custom acrylic " breeder-puffer tank". Black acrylic panels sides, back, bottom, top, clear front panel. Sand had to be added to reduce reflection on bottom. I found a new unexpected project during my stop which will be great fun to learn from. Opportunity had to be seized here ..... Red Eye Red Tailed Puffer -Carinotetraodon irrubesco. I picked out 2 males and 3 females for my initial colony. I am hoping for a productive pair out of the group. Received the new project I am excited to break the code on: A pair of Tetraodon schoutedeni who have displayed spawning behaviors prior to arrival here on the mountain top Moved four +/- 3" Pao baileyi Hairy puffers to a 75 colony breeding setup I will do a lighting diffuser divider with these 4 moving to the right 1/3 of the tank and leaving the left 1/3 to the three adults who have been a colony for the past 4 years and are giving indications of spawning interest. I will move them in there this weekend for an attempt at a batch of hairys. It was a decently productive fish room day overall

We decided that the "43 puffer breeder" is Pao palustris approved . Adult male palustris enjoying life ...and ramshorns

Thanks @nabokovfan87I have not seen that spot in any of my puffers I would observe it for changes and if and feeding or behavioral changes are noticed consider treating if it were mine. My guess is it could be a superficial bacterial skin infection/abcess/cyst I have had a bit of an abcess which that could be in a hairy before It self healed in this hairy puffer with no impact to appetite or long term health. I tend to think the nature of the skin lends itself to the occasional skin blemish.

My custom built "43 breeder" puffer tank 1.0 is now installed after I picked it up from an excellent custom acrylic sump builder near denver Colorado. I'd say that is aquarium related and will not name the builder here based off forum rules. I am sharing that more because that was surprisingly difficult to find a builder and I would have spent around 25% more buying materials and proper equipment to get my result below the level he did. This is what I sent him to start I subsequently shortened it to 12" tall because I did not need that extra volume or weight for my very specific use of this Here is the empty tank as soon as I brought it to the fishroom. This is pretty much exactly what my brain dreamed up with improvements we decided on during the build. The dividers allow for a filter and cave in each section. With either a 9.31"x23"x12", 18.62"x23"x12", 27.93"x23"x12", or a 37.25"x23"x12" chamber based off of how I use or leave out the dividers Black acrylic sides. bottom, back, and top clear acrylic front Top insertable dividers are reversible : holes up so flow between chambers can be limited, holes down to allow for flow the length of the bottom. Center divider reversed to show the holes blocked by the topsupport I am using 4 sections of 1/4" double wall polycarbonate for the top and eventually the coop lights for the illumination. Currently I have a fluval aquasky on 15% power for the tank. The led shop lights initially used were a bit to bright for the puffers in this set up. The trial and error phase of puffer tank testers I put a couple 1 year old palustris in to test out the tank. I quickly found thst the new and smooth black acrylic is not enjoyable to them due to the reflection in the bottom panel. I expect a bit of surface algae growth will mitigate that eventually. Those trails in the base are a puffer chin surfing it Fast forward 15 minutes to a 1/8" layer of pool filter sand and colors revert to calm and exploring began The current draft set up. Note the larger clay pot cave fits between the two dividers to allow me to breed bigger cave spawners like hairy puffers pao baileyi and seperate as needed. Two 100 watt coop heaters one back left and one back right . My plan for the filtration is currently the sicce since it has magnets to mount internal to each chamber and adjustible flow but the old school box filter with polyfil and crushed coral is tough to improve on Added two more F1 palustris to the group today bringing my total to 4. This pattern was too nice to not share here. It's not spawning pattern or normal coloration so it may just be a high alert display. They are about as amazing a fish as I've ever had the pleasure to learn from. This photo and the one below it may be the same individual but demonstrate some of the variations in color and patter the palustris shows even when not spawning. My options are 1. To breed my 3 adult wild caught pao cf palustris in this tank longer term 2. To grow this batch of F1 palustris and divide them into pairs trios etc as needed with the dividers 3. To move my adult hairy puffers into here and try and get spawning in the center large cave 4. To work on spotted congos (if I get a pair) in one section and palustris in the other section I'm not sure which I prefer to work on in this tank first and in which layout. I've giving myself a few options with this build and now I'm conflicted where to start. Anyone have any suggestions of species in which layout to breed first?

Nice that's pretty dewormed

@Patrick_G dans does quarentine and deworming, not positive one what meds, on the wild congos before selling.

For the mention @TheSwissAquarist . @Landon looking good. I do not have a spotted congo currently but I feed similarly sized adult puffers as much as they will eat once per day and 3 or 4 days a week. I normally shoot for around this shape with female pao palustris From the way back machine (2018) For a 4" adult puffer here that is about 10 ramshorns, 5 earthworms, or similar quantity of fish meat, shrimp, krill, or repashy. But i feed until they loose interest and are "full". The goal is to keep them in that sort of round belly Adult male palustris feeding Puffer fry and adolescents get as much as they want and grow that food belly on whatever I offer them worms snails etc Adolescent hairy puffer food belly Miurus adolescents vs shrimp meat baby palustris and whiteworms

@Guppysnail right there with you on the grocery store. Our independent one is a 15 minute drive from the house. It's an hour trip to a Walmart though. do the grindal on scrubby pads Fill the container with green pads (no additives or scents of course) and leave the top center open for the food and starter worms. These are just those black plastic lunch / food containers. I cut the corner out of the top and superglue gel papertowl over the hole to give a little air exchange. I use that cut out as my plastic covering the kibble food and that is where the worms are congregated in this photo. 3 layers of scrubby pads then a scrubby pad cut in half so there is a 1/2" strip where I can put the food. I do this so the plastic rests on the pads and the food. I normally feed kibble soak it in water a bit put that center part of the pads and sprinkle it with nutritional yeast or fish flake powder. I just crush it my fingers to get powder. I put the plastic cover over the food and just harvest grindal off that. Replace food as needed and I pour distilled water over the top of the pads then pour out the excess every few weeks. No smell normally. If I harvest the worms off the plastic only I can feed from each culture every 3rd day. White worms I do with needle point mesh sheets over Coco fiber. Food is bread wet with water or regular plain yogurt then nutritional yeast yeast down. I havent had cool enough temperatures To get the whiteworms to work on the pads but in theory they should work the same way. Whiteworms for me like way more wet and 60⁰ but the needle point mesh like Walmart etc sells normally gets them to concentrate below the food and on the mesh for me. I dip in water them rinse and feed. Whiteworm gif Big hits with 1/4" puffer fry :)

I have UPS more for cleaning the power wave a bit and giving me hours of internet and its connected cell signal for safety up here. They aren't big enough to provide power delivery long term for me. For tanks I have the portable powerstations jackery 1500 and jackery 200. Heaters can drain a battery fast the draw is not small. I use lots of live plants and one high volume airpump as my primary air and filtration that pump can be plugged into a powerstation and run like normal for a while that way. I use coop air pumps running sponge or box filters in some tanks as my in tank automatic emergency air flow and filtration they automatically kick over to battery power and run air for me even if im not home. My primary heat retention strategy is still the old school method because it works for me : 72hour heat packs activated and taped by edges to the tank front, and tape as my space balalets over the top to make a "heat bubble". That can be refreshed as meeded with new packs and monitored using a wifi temperature probe in the water and under the blanket.

Looking forward to your sucess with those 134s

@Patrick_G same here. This will be the first time I came up with a design and had it turned into reality ....whenever I pick it up

Moved way too many tanks and racks around in preparation for my custom designed puffer breeding tank that I should pick up from the manufacturer this week. This rack replaced a smaller one and was initially supposed to sit against the far wall with 2 40 breeders on it. It ended up with this layout when i wasnt comfortablewith the legs being quite that close to the main water cutoff for the house. Intelifaucet under the single tank rack on the fishroom sink. Currently the grow out for the 5 Tetraodon miurus . It's a bit of a "where's waldo exercise" but all 5 are visible in this photo along with there bags used to hold them for 6 hours of effort moving and setting tanks back up. This heater hasn't yet been upgraded to the coop heater so is still using the inkbird controller as the heater safety. Inkbird set higher than heater range so it in theory cuts off if the heater fails on.

@Leo2o915 I run wifi temperature probes inkbird, grill probes, etc as permanent fishtank monitors, and use either a heater with external controls, like the coop heater has, or run heaters through external controlers like inkbird Temperature Controllers. Those even have wifi and can do alerts and allow for remote monitoring and control. This is the natural pattern of temperature rise and fall over 3 days here with just sunlight heating and overnight cooling in approximately 50 gallons of pond with a cap of live plants to retain some heat. Full disclaimer my air is thun and normally dry so likely doesnt hold heat nearly as well up here at high altitude. My drops and rises are probably a but more drastic here than lower elevations would be. If I did that up here I would expect a similar gradient from pleco heated water temperatures down to mid 70s in room temperature air over probably 12 to 24 hours. There are tons of variables that would make that gradient shorter or longer in a given tank like cover, flow, decor holding and releasing heat, glass vs acrylic tank. etc . With external control of a heater I would just set the temperature for my desired low in the tank and not worry about it then just adjust thst temperature back up when desired. It would be easier on the breeding process for me to not disturb the process messing with a heater in a tank vs pushing a button to adjust temps less invasively

If you have java moss or some nice mulm'y plants I throw that in a breeder box with puffer fry as both cover and some microsopic food sources. I haven't yet worked on breeding schouldenti but I put in vinegar eels as soon as the first one hatches out for the Pao puffer fry then work up to grindal worms, baby brine shrimp, whiteworms, etc as they grow. I feed the smaller sizes of live foods well into the next sized food to cover all the ranges in puffer sizes in the box. An example is I still feed vinegar eels well into baby brine shrimp feeding days to help the slower growers catch up to the larger siblings.