Dwarf Puffer fever!

After much talk about everyone wanting dwarf puffers, and them having been sat in my LFS for a couple of weeks now, I finally got some! The four little fellows are in 15l for now (no lectures please, I'm aware of their upgrade requirements as they grow) they are only babies, approx 1.2cm long inc. tail at the moment and spending all their time sticking in a little shoal.

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This is the brightest coloured one (too tiny even for my camera's macro to focus on!):

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The tank was full of little ramshorn snails that I thought would be too big for them to eat; the plan was that the snails would breed and the puffers could eat the babies, turns out I was wrong! They decimated the population and will probably not need feeding for at least a couple of days now. This is after the lfs told me they had turned their noses up at anything other than bloodworm! Obviously they didn't have any pest snails in their tanks to feed them.

Inspired by my new puff babies, this is our Halloween pumpkin!

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The puffers are hard to resist aren't they! I wouldn't mind having some down
the road myself. Time for me to do some research on them.

Well congratulations on your puffers!

Oh, I like your pumpkin as it came out really nice!

Your pumpkin is so cool good luck with them, puffs are great

Very cute Kally! And the pumpkin is awesome

A[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to the puff obsession! They're so adorable! The pumpkin is ace too!

I love those little puffers...I wonder if they eat african land snail eggs? no be too big....snails size of their eyes is that right or did I make it up?

Well the snails that are in the tank are the little brown ramshorn snails, the largest of which have shells of about 5mm diameter. They were happily chowing down on the biggest ones yesterday, I was somewhat horrified at the speed of it, however they didn't even bite the shells, they sort of grabbed the snails by the body, sucked the whole thing out of the shell and spat the shell away.

I think they could take newly hatched African land snails, have you got millions of them breeding out of control? I used to keep them and there were forever eggs in the tank. Poor snail babies, I miss them sometimes.

Puff horror

I went to feed them just now, and one was missing. The tiniest one

I found him/her stuck in this tiny little hole on the filter, where the wire goes in at the top - the gap is only about 3mm. Normally I have filters just at the surface so that the outflow disturbs the top of the water, but this one for some reason sucks air in through that hole and instead of aerating the water, it stops the flow, so it has to be submersed.

Little puff got sucked in tail first and was dead when I found him

I'm so upset. I've wedged some sponge into the hole and am going to be looking for a new filter.

My poor puff baby

So sorry to hear that KJ. The puffer are so cute too! Its a shame to lose
them. I really like their little bodies. It a shame when equipment manages to take a fish when one tries to do everything just so.

oh that is awful...so sorry...I have lost fish like that, usually babies. I lost a betta as well it somehow managed to get through the tiniest crack in an ornament and couldn't get out. So none of my bettas have ornaments now! Couldn't be helped about your puffer one of those things x

It was horrible pulling his little body out most of it had gone so it was just his face, it was horrifying.

It's possible he could have died, floated up and got sucked into there, as I've not seen any of them venture near the top of the tank at all before this. I saw him earlier though and he didn't look poorly, nor has there been any bullying in the tank.

Poor puff I've ordered a different filter anyway, a fluval one so I can have the outflow just poking above the water surface, I have the same one in another tank and it's been great - no holes to get sucked into.

Oh no i'm sorry, how horrid

Well, im not into puffers, they are cute tho, but the pumpkin is fab

That's such a shame Kal. RIP wee one.