lotsabubbles

Hi All ! I am new to this site. I have a young, spotted green puffer. Have had him for a week in his own 10 gallon tank. After prior research & reading the posts here, I am still confused as everyone seems to have different opinions... (He is not a dwarf or a F8.) 1. Brackish or Fresh ? (have some salt in now- not a lot). 2. He doesn't eat flakes, dried Bloodworms, dried shrimp, wafers, or even a tiny piece of dried cat food (!).
3. I am guessing he will only eat live or maybe frozen? He spits everything out & now I have to clean his tank due to the uneaten food. 4. If he is spitting it out, is he getting any nutrition at all? Seems happy & lively. 5. I also have a ton of brown algae suddenly...Help !!! LOB

GreenMan13

I don't know a lot about puffers but I have been looking into getting one myself.

From what I have read:

Green Spotted Puffers (GSP) are brackish water. You shouldn't change the specific gravity (SG) fast though due to bacteria needing to change from fresh to salt. Eventually though you will want it to be around 1.015 SG for GSP.

Marine Salt is better then aquarium salt since you will be using a lot and it has more minerals that are good for the GSP.

Food wise I think snails, shrimp, or crabs are the most common thing they eat. Only need to feed them about once a day to once every other day once they start eating. It they spit it out, they are not getting any nutrition.

It can live in a 10 gal for a while but once it starts getting bigger then about 2in it should be moved to something larger like a 30 gal.

Most of this I have found off of this site:
http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/..._Nigroviridis/

That forum is great also since they are specific to puffers and puffers are pretty unique in terms of care.

lotsabubbles

Thanks GMan! going to check out that site & use your good info ! lob

steveangela1

you def want to get him some snails to chow down on they have teeth that constantly grow and they need the shells to help them w/ that.

staindskin

i have a brackish ceylon puffer. i saved him from a local fish store as all the others in his tank were slowly dying, he seemed most healthy so i got him out of there. He is doing better than i could have hoped for, i built him his own home and just leave him to it. Anyway....to mix his salt i usually fill bucket of water and add dechlorinater treatment. Then in a seperate bucket i mix marine salt with r.o. water. then i slowly add saltwater to tapwater until i get the right salt level. he is currently at 1.005.

sirdarksol

One advantage of brackish water is that you don't need to maintain a really stable specific gravity. Natural brackish water changes in salinity as you move through the water. Currents and eddies may create pockets of almost pure fresh or salt water, even.
When making the water for my brackish tank, I simply measure by volume. Five gallons of water gets one tablespoon of marine salt. This tactic would not work with a full marine tank, because ocean water is pretty homogeneous in any given area, but it works fine with brackish (there is a belief that it's even good for brackish fish)