mountaintoppufferkeeper
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Posts posted by mountaintoppufferkeeper
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Thats a great song 🙂
@Fish Folk Not too elaborate just using plastic food containers with a vent for a little airflow. The standard green scrubber pads are stacked up 5 high or so. The top layer has a "trench" cut out to hold the kibble in it. I keep 1/4 " of water in it and flood/rinse with water ever 5 days or so or when the worms finish the kibble. Its more copying the grindal worm method out there than anything the key has been keep them with a pool of water in the bottom. Its not as productive as other methods but no soil is nice. This setup is enough to feed out a tablespoon of worms every day if i keep the kibble full
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On 11/15/2023 at 10:39 PM, Fish Folk said:
I hope that you get some helpful connections. Unfortunately, there are not very many Europeans on this Forum. @mountaintoppufferkeeper may be able to suggest some feeding tips. He breeds interesting Puffers.
@Fish Folk thanks for the mention..... not euorpean but am in the mountains. The closest I can come is the significant amount of scottish in the ancestry and the red beard to match it
My standard is a few garlic extract (garlic guard) and a vitamin (vitachem) on foods.
Disclaimer: I havent yet needed to try this on the spotted congos. But if i have to try and treat without commercial meds my homemade option (could potentially be risky) is a salt dip using tank water in a bucket/container to match the temp and ph of the tank at a 16 ppm salt concentration. I have not done the math on that ppm i use a tds meter to measure it.
I observe the fish and remove them back to the fresh main tank water if they react poorly but will leave them in for a bit to make sure anything not puffer has a really bad day if they look tolerate it.
On foods ive been having success with frozen raw tilapia cut into strips and soaked in vitachem and garlic extract drops even for spotted congos.
Worms have been excellent. If you could do snails occasionally im sure it would be ok for their teeth. I have not seen a big issue with overgrowth here ....yet
The F1 fry do have a bit of a snail shell collection going but they mostly jist eat those whiteworms which i culture on scrubber pads (soil-less) and kibble
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On 11/15/2023 at 12:14 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:
Do you think that it would be possible that there are different locales for these puffers, like with rainbows?
For sure but i think part of the issue is some are colocated in the same rivers in the vicinity of the mekong delta. Its going to be a fun process to figure out. The original taxonomy claasifications are what im currently tracking down.
Slight update is we contacted the exporter who contacted their source and shared that group #1 was not farmed and were wild caught in the "mekong delta". They are also not confident they are abei but note that abei are fairly impoasible to identify when not grown and displaying.
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On 11/8/2023 at 2:02 PM, Zeaqua said:
Hi all! Thought this might be fun.
How many of you have that one (or several!) fish? You really want it, but for whatever reason, you just don’t have it yet. It could be rare or expensive, or you could just lack the tank space needed. Whatever it is, what’s on your Fish Wish Lish™️?A group of duboisi puffer to grow out and try to spawn... though the group of cross rivers have kind of taken that slot for the moment
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On 11/14/2023 at 10:15 AM, DanielBlub said:
THX for your informations. I orderd now exact this polyfilter.
I use 3 aquariums for my Puffers.
An 55 liter dennerle tank for the puffers who are 1cm+, and 2 "IKEA Kallax" tanks wiht 25Liters for the eggs and jung puffers (check pictures).
But i can´t find the error, why only 2 for 300 puffers survived in my last try. I use extrem clan water from an osmosis system, mixed with freshwater salt to get:
KH 3, (Carbonat)
GH 5 (overall hardness)
PH ~6,5
NO2 0
~26°C
.....
That looks amazing. I hatch in the ring and use that to contain the fry with the food for the first few weeks or more.
Initial days.... plants in ring
More advanced... still in ring
i waited until they were eating grindal worms and trying the bigger whiteworms to release my last batch into the 20 gallon / 75 liter. If i keep them full to brineshrimp and grindal worm size, which is generally at a few weeks old, they seem to all make it
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On 11/14/2023 at 5:06 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:
Google lens can be pretty useful with rare fish ID imo.
Yeah that gives just about all puffer possibilities and a few extras i do love some google lens. Those paos are tough to determine. I may try one of the researchers off of a google scholar paper to see if they have any insights....particularly on wildcard 1
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On 11/14/2023 at 8:42 AM, DanielBlub said:
Thank you mountaintoppufferkeeper
About the polyfilter, is this the sponge who change his color if it dedects nitrit? If yes, i know waht u mean, and this is a good idea.
You talk abaut waterchange, how many waterchange are u doing and how much % did you do each?
I tend to run a large amount of live plants in my puffer tanks to help keep the water cleaner and grow that infusoria and other small foods.
Yes the color change polyfilter . I cut it into small cubes and judge the water quality visually. For me it is just a little insurance between water changes.
I am mostly using it for Organic Wastes: which it absorbs as itchanges to light tan and progresses to dark brown. For me it has been extremely helpful.
I probably change 25% of the main tank water a week and use airline to siphon out any excess debris in the ring as needed daily being careful to avoid the puffer fry .
If my polyfilter changes color too fast would try 25% ever 3 days here. I do not want too much fluctuation in the parameters especially in their first few weeks of growth
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I have probably added pao abei to the fishroom. I have not kept the species before this but may have a few different species to identify. I may have an idea on most but id like any suggestions and guidance as applicable on confirming my initial identifications:
Group #1. Sold while fairly small Pao abei from a farm in SE asia they are much more patterened over tan gravel than the black sand it covers.
What is your guess for this group's species?
Looks to be a male based of belly patterns and behaviors
Look to be females in back corner
Same puffers over the black sand
Group #2. Also sold as Pao abei from a different source. What is your guess for this group's species?
Wildcard #1. Came In with group 2 above. the cheek pattern and the diamond marking on the forhead are not quite the same as the group. The mouth to me is a little more ambush puffer than the group looks. This puffer was also sold as P.abei. What is your guess for this puffer's species?
Wildcard #2 has the look and feel of a young P.suvattii (arrowhead) to me ...also sold as an ....abei. the forhead arrow marking, the cheek line markings, along with a more upturned mouth brought me to arrowhead. What is your guess for this puffer'd species?
No id needed F1 congo fry and whiteworms
And for fun
Pao leiurus courtship
T.Pustulatus going full camera pose
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On 11/13/2023 at 2:27 PM, DaveO said:
So Matthew Proctor, who you know here as @mountaintoppufferkeeper, wrote an interesting article in Amazonas magazine (Jan/Feb 2023 issue) on this very topic. In the article he describes his technique of slow water change and filtration. That's all I can say because I don't want to speak out of turn. If you can get hold of a copy it should help.
thanks for the mention @DaveO. @DanielBlub i like to use a floating ring like you have in a bigger tank to keep the water quality up between water changes, I use polyfilter cubes, that change color based off of what they absorb, to see how the water is doing daily.
I dont think I can feed enough paramecium to grow large numbers of spotted congo fry past 5 days but i do think I can make enough infusoria and paramecium to feed them for the firat 14 days.
I feed the baby puffers paranecium 2-3 times a day and feed infusoria at the same time. That seems to keep the food around the puffer fry longer especially if my light source is somewhat concentrated on the sides of the ring.
I squeeze out a sponge filter from the adult puffer tank into a glass jar to start my infusoria culture.
Grindal worms have also been helpful i culture those on scrubber pads and dog kibble.
I feed the larger fry whiteworms i also grow on scrubber pads and kibble.
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Intersting anything like a sharp edge in or around the cave ?
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To me it seems closer to an abcess / pimple like deal on the skin which one of my hairys had in the past about 2 years into living here. It just appeared in day lasted a couple of weeks and eventually just "self cleansed"
He never stopped eating, this never occured in the others olin the colony and never came back on this puffer.
The between puffer nibbles are more like the circles on the belly of the male palustris here
The circles can also be seen below. He is the darker pao palustris puffer. This is the same male as above just in the spawning dress
I generally just observe for changes to the mark or behavior of the puffer.
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On 10/13/2023 at 12:07 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:
Call me a newbie but I’m still marveling at the DIY filters. 😅
Yeah those are handy. They are an older design of boxfilter I run. Air driven and able to hold plenty of whatever media is needed. That uplift tube is a bit of a hotrod modification to increase the flow.
Im running 3 of them with sera media and polyfill floss In the 270 ....and 4 sicce 900 pros with 2 extra chambers of sponge.
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Yeah nothing to major they do get fired up for food mostly.
Then they feast and find a nice a nice spot to grow.... and repeat tomorrow
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I kept forgetting it was an option on the phone. Ill work on better ines in the future
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They do not seem to mess with clams much for me (the shell is untouched in the clip below), they prefer snails: mysterys, trapdoors, ramshorns.
I have also fed whole frozen krill to them. That helped disperse the food and limit the need for defending it. Id assume shrimp would work the same as krill.
They are primarily are eating frozen thawed raw crayfish. I put one of around this size in 6 locations around the tank. They generally have locations they eat in and if i can break up the sight lines they just focus on the food and not defending it.
I figured out the super slow mo setting on the samsung. There is a frozen raw crayfish behind the one planter and another to the left of the boxfilter. This is impossible to see at normal speeds but is a the general idea of how they defend food against eachother.
There have been less marks on their bodies than when they initially arrived so it may be more of a display like this was than using their mouths to sort it out.
They do quite a bit of posturing and tail fanning. My intention is to get a pair or trio still but all four seem to be going well.
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It is certainly going to be an adventure and learning process with them. They are a whole different puffer when feeding or hunting food vs the rest of the time. I am cautiously optomistic about the project and am learning more about their behaviors and patterns each day I have with them.
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9 October 23 Update
More easyplanters are still on the way for addition into the "cross river pond" this week.
My plan is to create four feeding stations spread across the tank using a few easyplanters each. The feeding stations will use plants to limit the ability for the puffers to see each other while eating at any station.
My goal is to condition them to feed at their prefered "feeding station" locations so I can limit the need to defend their food against each other. Two have already claimed the front corners of the tank and Two have claimed the back corners.
All my puffer colonys (Pao palustris, P.baileyi, the spotted congos, and to some extent the P.abei) have had some similarity to the Tetraodon pustulatus behaviors while sorting out their spots in their colony. Based off those experiences and the currently observed behaviors with the cross rivers I still believe its got a shot at working out as they mature. I have caught two sleeping next to eachother a few times this first month
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On 10/9/2023 at 6:44 PM, Leo2o915 said:On 10/9/2023 at 1:04 PM, nabokovfan87 said:
That looks like too much fun!!! Did you decide on a name?
Also... have to share this with you... it's too good!!!
No name yet and yeah Matt is the puffer guru
....aspiring puffer guru lol. But it would be cool if I broke the cross river breeding and raising fry code.
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On 10/9/2023 at 9:34 AM, Leo2o915 said:
So finally took the leap and got myself a Cross River Puffer! This is literally like having a water dog!
Looking great leo
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8 october 23 :
Today we tried the first frozen thawed raw "bait" crayfish today. We are still learning how to eat this food item but they are fans it seems. The hope is to have this food be in regular rotation as they grow.
A still of the first taste of crayfish here.
These four cross rivers are very food defensive. My current strategy, to limit their need to defend food against each other, is to position even more coop planters and plants so that each member has a sheltered location to eat frozen meals which is blocked from the view of the other four "feeding stations" across the 270 gallon.
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Looks great im glad the "kelp" has been decent for you
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This evening: two of the four Tetraodon pustulatus cross river puffers. 4 of 8 extra large amazon swords added to the coop easy planters 4 still floating. If these puffers arent full they are looking for food any time they see me.
Small fish are limia vittata who serve as their "clean up crew"
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thanks for the heads up @nabokovfan87
@Vanessa K congratulations on the spotted congo puffer colony. I can only speak to my personal experience and process. For my puffer acclimation I generally do temperature acclimation by floating puffers in their bags for 30-45 minutes with the lights off, especially when they travel for a while I dose the tsnk with water conditioner then just cut the bags open and release them, water and all, after the temperature acclimation.I leave the lights off the first couple of hours after release.
My preference is to have a bunch of snails in the tanks so they can start eating at their own pace once settled. I do offer food after the lights are turned back on as well; generally puffers are quick to adjust and be ready for food in my tanks.
I do not worry about parameter acclimation personally and am more concerned about the ammonia spike risk in the bag water once I expose it to air. I defer to those that use it for their processes for specifics on how to do that method.
In the distant past I have rarely cut open the bag at the top and add the tank water to the bags a cup at a time every 5 minutes for about 15 or 20 minutes before release into the tank. But I have found that unncessary for my new arrivals.
I do treat the tank with a water conditioner when they arrive with Fritz A.C.C.R and use live plants. I worry less about any ammonia spike issues in my situation due the dillution of the bag water into the main tank volume of water, the live plants, and the conditioner that neutralizes any ammonia which is present.
A single 1/8th inch (3.18 mm) long mekong puffer fry once inflated in a net and get air stuck. That batch had 1 of 300 to do that.... rare but possible. That puffer was a around this size (an earlier batch). It was my one experience of a puffer fry inflating with air and it being an issue. This is a Pao palustris mekong river puffer F1 fry. The light smudges are baby brine shrimp
I believe, based of my own learning experiences, that older puffers have less trouble expelling air than younger fry. for my comfort I avoid the risk personally and accept the risk of adding a small amount of bag water to the tank. I keep them all under water when they arrive its a personal preference
Spotted congos displaying
Spotted congo fry growth up here
Congrats on the new puffers I look forward to any forum updates of their progress.
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Fed the aquahuna purchased algae shrimp ....some extreme algae flake I got from the coop.
As suggested on the forum this is an attempt at a polyculture with neocaradina in the floating german breeding ring abive. The spotted congo fry. The intent to have shrimplets for baby puffers when the sizes work out
One of the F1 spotted congo fry. Still growing just the 4. Post puffer room reset the adult spotted congo group hasnt yet thrown eggs into my collector. Big fan of sitting on the leaves next to a shrimp that left the breeding ring
Another of the four f1 fry. They like tiny snails and whiteworms currently
And the four cross rivers got a billiondy'ish 🙂 earthworms tonight
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Managed to get decent photos of 2 of the 4 cross river puffers. They are a pretty cool interactive species. This has been the hardest project so far but they are beginning to find their calm with eachother. Lots of plants, lots of food, lots of space, and even more plants and coop planters
Less decent of the other 2
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About to invest in congo spotted puffer breeding!
in Fish Breeding
Posted
Thanks for the mention @AllFishNoBrakes. @LTygressawesome stuff. Congrats on all the successes. I too like the challenges. I think i got all the questions from your post. Apologies if i missed any.
does anyone have a paramecium culture they can send me a part of?
i would say a paramecium culture isnt really a need need until you are seeing spawning and starting to grab eggs. I would look at biological supply houses / lab suppliers for the paramecium starter cultures. Thats where paramecium for science projects in schools, college, field studies of water quality etc. are sourcing them.
It is probably worth going that way to have a clean starter with no risk of anything else in it. Those suppliers ship that all the time quick and fairly easy. when i grabbed them for the spotted congo fry that was my source.
I would also look at copepods from your filtration as a seperate food culture. they may eat the paramecium so that is a seperate culture here. I believe copepods helped alot on my last batch of congos.
But how do microworms and vinegar eels compare in size to paramecium?
The small side of paramecium are listed in the 50 micrometer/micron long range. paramecium basicsally look like cloudy water to my eye. I would guess a paramecium is as long as a microworm is in diameter so a bit smaller.
I havent had a spotted congo fry eat a vinegar eel. I also think that, after recording their feeding process and thinking on it for a few months , they probably mostly feed in the water column and it probably has to be paramecium and other infusoria until they grow big enough for baby brine shrimp.
ThIs GIF is how they feed up here in those first weeks. The fry who is facing the bbs as it starts basically drives themselves at a 45⁰ angle up into the paramecium. this is a bunch of days old. That bbs puts their spotted congo size into perspecive. The camera can not see the paramecium that was above them.in the water column. if i had to guess i would say they would probably not eat worms until after they were big enough for bbs
I am fairly limted in my spotted congo experience but i keep a few puffer species in colonys and document spawning and raising fry in all of them when it cloccurs. I have bred and raised pao palustris many times, and tetraodon schouldenti a couple of times so far.
the challenge seems to be the fry food side and the growth rate in spotted congos. A,t least up here it has been much slower than any of my Pao fry have been. have been.
These are 4 months old 3/4" long or so. They have been crushing food for the duration. Currently eating whiteworms and every snail in their tank as seen in the substrate. Part of the spotred congo price may be the long growout time in addition to food needs, but im sure it could be sped up with some batches.
Is a smaller tank better - like a 20G? Or is that too tight?
I would argue bigger footprint is better for these and all puffer colonys. The gif below was a 20 gallon i used to qt wild spotted congos....and its almost certainly a male and female. Id go 30 gallon or bigger personally.
I breed my spotted congos in either my 43 breeder custom acrylic "puffer breeding tank" or in a 40 breeder colony set up. The two in this clip and 2 more have had no aggression issues in either footprint. This in my view was a direct result of the tank being too small. She was looking to injure there. They would both do this behavior for the duration of the qt.
Same 2 and 2 more 43 breeder little more sociable id say
But I'm thinking I will need to see and catch these eggs, so maybe a fine grade (which compacts down to almost a solid base) is better?
I think whatever you prefer my best success was setting up an egg trap basicslly and removing the subwassertang etc they spawn in to hatch out.
Mine have only spawned in plants he will flip belly to belly in the plants and drive them both down and in. They will them spawn. Its more contain and remove for me.
Did you know a bare bottom tank is usually when and why discus show no peppering?
Its wild that happens. I personally think my puffer species are all bothered by the bare bottom its probably more the shine thand anything if i had to guess based on my observations. I also have found they show better color and pattern on lighter substrate. I do the tractor supply blasting media for the dark substrate and normally pool filter sand for the puffers.