Changing Species, advice on my tank.

[Nora]

I am rehoming my pea puffer after 1 year (multi reasons, but over all not the right fit).  The tank is 5gal with built in filter (dont love the filter system).  I will be getting a Betta (probably halfmoon or elephant ear) , and and keeping the mystery snails I have.  Any thoughts on what is should do between fish?  Do I need a week or 2 without any live stock (I can keep the snails in my 1gal)?  Should I change to a different type of substrate?  Change to the simple sponge filter system?   My plants have been a bit lackluster should I take a month to really get them vibrant/or pruned/extra growth and how?  How would you all make the most of this opportunity without completely starting from scratch.

Edited March 25 by Nora

[Odd Duck]

Pea puffers are TOUGH and very challenging to maintain.  The last of mine finally passed and I won’t be getting more as they aren’t really the right fit for me, either.  And I tried very hard, even raised some babies from eggs (somewhat by accident, honestly).

I would leave the tank running with no fish for at least 2 weeks, 4 weeks would likely be better.  Leave snails in, they’re fine.  Then just work on getting plants back the way you want them.  Root tabs, liquid ferts, dial in the lights, etc.  Make any necessary adjustments to flow rate of the filter you need for flowy-finned bettas if that’s what you settle on.  Outflow baffle, for instance, to slow any current without reducing flow rate through the filter.  Then you should only need to pick out the fish you want.

You shouldn’t need any big changes to the tank as your filter will be fine as long as any excessive current is controlled / baffled, and your substrate isn’t really important to bettas other than making sure it isn’t sharp.  Make sure you feed the snails so your biofiltration maintains.  You may (or may not) have a tiny ammonia / nitrite / nitrate bump as you have some beneficial bacteria die off from decreased feeding without a pea puffer in the tank.  They are such messy eaters!  But you should still maintain enough to account for a betta as long as you keep at least a little bit of food going in for the snails.

[knee]

J

On 3/25/2024 at 10:05 AM, Nora said:

 

I am rehoming my pea puffer after 1 year (multi reasons, but over all not the right fit).

 

 

On 3/25/2024 at 10:35 AM, Odd Duck said:

I won’t be getting more as they aren’t really the right fit for me, either.

Can you tell me why the pea puffer isn’t a right fit? I have an empty 20 long that I want to make into a dedicated pea puffer or shrimp tank but I’m still on the fence about it. 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

@knee I’ve had my Pea Puffers for 2 or 3 years and I enjoy them. 
 

I don’t do the most and have a bunch of live cultures. Mine get bloodworms and snails. Bloodworms are easy for me as I can use 1 cube per day and split it across 5 or 6 tanks. I have Ramshorns in most of my tanks, and they end up becoming Pea Puffer snacks so it works out well for me. 
 

In my experience they’ve been pretty easy, they’re super interactive, and it’s just fun to have a tiny Puffer. DM me if you have more questions or wanna chat about em!

[Nora]

@knee For me since I only have the one tank and the one fish Ive ended up with wasting more bloodworms than Id like to (money wise and smell wise in the trash).  She really likes snails but eats waaay more than I expected so trying to keep up with the demand has been hard, trying to have fellow hobbyists who consistently are looking to get rid of snails has been tough, pacing ordering snails on ebay during periods of cold or hot weather is tough too.  Ive ended up with the one gallon side tank to try to get snails to breed before they all get eaten but that has also not been consistently successful.  The food debris also leads to needing to clean the tank more often even if its just due to smell, and my time has been less flexible of late.  She is super cute, and interactive and Ive never actually seen her puff (even when the cat gets close) so pretty fearless.  Given how long they can live I just think she needs someone who can be consistent with the fresh food and on a regular schedule with the change outs.

[Odd Duck]

On 3/25/2024 at 3:51 PM, knee said:

J

 

Can you tell me why the pea puffer isn’t a right fit? I have an empty 20 long that I want to make into a dedicated pea puffer or shrimp tank but I’m still on the fence about it. 

Sure.  They hide so much that it was hard to see them. Even the solo Bad Pea Daddy (AKA BPD) would hide a lot. He had fish in the tank next to him so he had visual contact with “dithers”.  He got fed the most enticing live foods I could manage every day. He got frequent water changes to optimize his health. Yet he still hid most of the time to the point I didn’t realize he had yeeted himself out of the tank for 3 days.

The shoal of peas that I worked soooooo hard to acquire and raise the right sex ratio - 2 males and 7 females in a heavily planted 29 G, with all the same consisting as BOD, would still hide so much I could rarely get an accurate count on them.  There were always some that were so sun-dominant I barely saw them eat.

They had plenty of live foods every day: 3 different species of snails, whiteworms, blackworms, Grindal worms, Daphnia, and / or scuds daily. Adults wouldn’t eat microworms or vinegar eels, rarely ate any frozen foods, never ate any dried or freeze dried foods and never ate any live wingless fruit flies.

They were such jerks to each other that they whittled down their population to 4 (1 male, 3 females) by the time I finally moved them to a ridiculously heavy planted 10 G.  Then they whittled down to a single female who just recently passed, possibly of old age.  When / if I found bodies they always had bite marks and other injuries.

They don’t call them murder beans for nothing!  While all fish have potential to be territorial and have occasional battles, most nanofish won’t actually kill each other. I’m not really fond of fish that regularly kill each other. Angels are as far as I go and if mine start to be bullies they get pulled out of the tank and go into isolation for a few weeks.  My Jack Dempseys when not breeding are far wimpier than my angels (not in the same tank) and the bigger of the little festivums is the tank boss over the Jacks.  The silver dollars in that tank only spar among themselves.

So it boils down to fish being jerks which is not my jam. The Jacks and Festivums are tolerable, the angels are tolerable.

The pea puffers are stone cold killers. BPD killed 6 pea puffers (3 peas x 2 tries at breeding groups when he was younger) and tried to kill number 7 before I gave up on integrating him into a shoal. And the dominant male in the shoal and whoever else helped him, plus the dominant female, between them killed 7 more peas. Not my jam.

I really did learn a lot about keeping live foods when I had them and still keep live food cultures for other fish.  But I won’t deliberately choose another highly aggressive yet territorial, shoaling fish.