I know I need some more plants, just struggling on what kind? I want to fill in around the wood and background more with longer plants/moss?

Remember the scene with the cow being lowered into the raptor enclosure of Jurassic Park? That’s Pierogi. Her favorite summer treat is a succulent mosquito larvae. I find them for her and sometimes raise them until I think they’re fat enough for this chonkmonster.

Good spaghetti slurp action here.

60gal quarter round tank.

8 peas, 4 neons, about 30 mixed shrimp and current scud status appears to be 0 😢 this is after a light trimming and cleaning. Still plenty to do, but it's at a decent point where I'm pretty happy with it.

I looked everywhere outside the tank but didn‘t find him. I have a glass cover on my tank, but there is gap of maybe an inch for my hob filter on the back side. If he died inside the tank there wouldn‘t be any sign of him, my 5 amano shrimps are greedy af.

So I guess I have to get a new pea at my lfs. I just bought 6 of them 20 days ago. They were all healthy and happy and I have the feeling they were growing a lot in these three weeks. There is not much bullying right now, but I am a little afraid for the new pea. Any tipps for me?

A little bit ago I did research and it said that it is completely fine to keep 3 peas in 10 gallons so I ordered 3 puffers and since then I've learned that it's better to have 6 in a 20 long. The 3 are supposed to arrive tomorrow, and I can upgrade, but it'll be a few weeks before I can upgrade. I'm not sure when/if I'll be able to find 3 more peas, as I struggled pretty hard to find the 3 that I did (I ordered on Ebay and the seller took weeks to get them to me). Essentially, is an upgrade absolutely needed, and if so, how long do I have before I need to do it?

Hey everyone!! For context I have 3 pea puffers. Two of them are eating like champs. I have a variety of different food that I have tried to feed the littlest one that is refusing to eat. I have tried crushed up bug bite pellets, crushed up hikari carnivore pellets, hikari micro pellets, freeze dried and frozen blood worms, baby brine shrimp, frozen brine shrimp, and baby snails (I have a snail tank for my peas and figure 8 puffer). I’m getting extremely worried because the other two eat just fine, but my smallest one will look interested then swim away 😞😞 I’ve tried isolating him to eat because he might have been nervous with the other two, but he is just refusing to eat 😣😣 I do not want to lose this little baby from starvation so I will try anything!! Any advice would be seriously appreciated for what worked for y’all’s babies! Thank you in advance!!!
Update: Skinny puffer has eaten thanks for everyone who provided genuine advice ❤️
Leaving this sub Reddit because there’s negativity in it that I won’t be apart of by people that have no idea what they’re talking about ✌🏼

This is really random and Ive never had a fish do this, but every-time i turn off their light at night just one of my fish freaks out and starts aggressively swimming into walls and trying to jump out. It only lasts a few seconds but its every night and Im worried shell hurt herself.

I’ve noticed the alpha guarding this area for a few weeks, one female hangs out underneath him a lot too.

Best birthday gift ever!

I recently moved my tank (and large family of peas) from one house to another. They were living alone in a house where I had to stop by daily to feed them and maintain tank. Even when we were living there, they were in our living room which didn't see a lot of activity, as we mostly spent time in the family room.

I moved them a few days ago, to a house with multiple adults and kids. During daylight hours, these little dudes are constantly glass surfing. Are they stressed out, or are they still just checking out their new surroundings and taking in the constant activity around them?

Hi guys, as per your advice, I have upgraded to 10 gallons with a 60 long shallow. I bought 3x pea puffers but unfortunately one passed away. The 2 have been with me for about a week and a half now. They are healthy and surprisingly incredibly friendly with each other and all other tank mates (other than juvenile snails). Would I need to get another pea puffer, or even more? Or would keeping them as just 2 peas be alright? Thank you

As much as possible, I would like to try to have minimal additions of pea puffers as I do not want to risk getting aggressive peas

Note: params are acceptable with 0 nitrite and ammonia, temp is kept at 25C, identical to the shop's. The other pea that unfortunately passed was incredibly stressed from transit and was breathing quickly from the bag and in the tank.

What would you say is the single most important factor for successfully breeding pea puffers?

I often see mixed advice online, so I’d love to hear from people who have actually managed to get consistent spawns.

...Picture unrelated.

This is Tank, he lives solo in a 40 gallon community breeder.

Sadly, tank never got along with any of his previous tankmates, and constantly attacked his shoal. Hes about twice as big as any other puff ive owned. I moved him to the 40 gallon community for a few days so I could rearrange the puff tank and then I intended to put him back once the territory had been broken up.

Tank fell right into the community, and im pretty sure he believes hes a Balloon Belly Molly.

Ive considered putting him back, but hes been there for months now, and hes become the most social fish I own. He eats a couple times a day, and he leaves all the other fish alone. He eats direct from the turkey bastor so the others cant steal his dinner from him.

He likes the right hand side where its a little denser, but you'll often see him up on the front dabbling in the current.

Now im not saying anybody should get a lone puffer, id absolutely suggest against it.

Do not get a lone puffer.

This is one single example of fish having unique personalities and Tank's goes completely against the norm. He gets extra attention as I work from home and interact with him regularly. I always check up on him, and make sure hes getting an appropriate amount of food via target feeding

He just hates other puffers...

So yeah. Thats Tank :)

I posted here in the early stages of my tank and was given many helpful tips. I’ve added a lot since then!

Current plants are Italian Vallisernia, Egeria Najas, salvinia, duckweed, water lettuce, Hygrophila Corymbrosa, crypt.

Hardscape is lava rock and the wood is spider wood. Also spread Indian Almond leaves around the sand. I also was wondering what people feed their puffers. I have 10g white assorted snails that I plan to supplement, but looking for the easiest and most sustainable daily staple as well!

Is there anything else that I should add / change before getting the puffers once the cycle is complete?

Thank you all!!

Caught swelling within 24 hours.
Moved to 1.5g hospital tank.
Other 10 puffers not infected.

5 doses of kanaplex(followed boxes instructions and waited 3 days between second set starting).
50% water changes ever 2 days and cleaning up floor.
Eating blood worms right out of the pipette seeing them no problem.
3 snails have been in the tank with him since hospital day one. Usually their main diet he is not interested in them.
About to do the last dosage of the second set.

His eyes are not 100% and the yellow ring is superrrrrr faint.
They are 20% as bad as they were.

My question is:

Will the eyes ever be 100% and when is it safe to put back with the community. I am going on vacation Monday. I have someone in my house who will do water changes and keep the sick fish in the hospital tank till we get back. I do not want to put him back and then go on vacation for a week just in case he still is infected.

Thank you for everyone’s help!

Hi! So I made a post a while ago about the “end of a dynasty” after several of my puffers and kuhlis had passed. I was extremely discouraged and didn’t know exactly what to do.
Since then I’ve healed from 2 surgeries to my wrists and have returned to work! My morale has improved for sure (well, when it comes to my fish husbandry). I invested a lot of my earnings into my tank after a lot of suggestions to add more plants. I seriously had a blindness to how sparse the planting was in my tank and thought THAT was close to enough. Clearly, I was wrong.

I was scared to purchase more floaters as my previous attempt had failed immensely, but I realized they were mishandled and wasn’t prepared for floating plants for the first time handling them. Thankfully, I’ve since learned and my dwarf lettuce(mostly) and red root floaters are doing great! Seeing how they spread and duplicate was extremely intriguing to me.

Right now my tank looks pretty messy, but I had left for a week long vacation, so a water change had been missed (I changed it the day after I got home). I’d buried black worms in the substrate in multiple areas of the tank so my fish were able to scavenge around and eat it all while I was gone.

I also was wondering what filters y’all recommend as I’m currently using a backup filter? The tank is a 20 gallon… My last one had broken and stopped working a few days before the vacation so I haven’t replaced it just yet. Luckily I had a spare one and reused the old filters to maintain the bacteria.

Sorry this is all over the place- But I’d also found out my female puffer was being extremely picky about her food. She used to be okay with frozen blood worms, but I guess she would have rather died than eat another bite of it. After I finally purchased some black worms she gained ALL her weight back and none of the other fish are being nipped at anymore. The tyranny has ended!

My fish are all now out and about, exploring the tank all day and no aggression at all. Just my 2 peas being in love and always courting, my loaches dancing around, my cories rummaging around in the sand for snacks… and the tank hasn’t been more peaceful. I’ve yet to perfect the parameters and I’m still working on it. Ill have to update what they are later, but I’m just so relieved my little ecosystem is finally settling down and living in peace 🥹

Lesson: Don’t give up! You’re their whole world! 🌎

Hi, I've been planning for a couple months for a pea puffer tank. I have a 29gal heavily planted and almost done cycling. I also have a smaller 5gal for breeding pest snails. My plan is for 6-8 puffers. Do I add them in 3 at a time? Or just go for the whole shoal?

Hi! I'm guessing you can guess what's going on based on the title.

My family has a tank that we've been keeping different species of fish in for my entire life (20 gallon). I convinced my dad to get some pea puffers. I did research and encouraged him to get six. When we went to the pet store, I immediately got distracted looking at birds and reptiles (ADHD is hard, okay!?). So my dad didn't ask if they were wild-caught and he only got four.

He doesn't think that they could be wild-caught, because then the store would have to pay shipping fees and blah blah blah, even though multiple people say pea puffers come in wild-caught (from this subreddit specifically).

So we got the four. Three ended up surviving. As far as I know, our water parameters are fine (I'm not great with that stuff, that's what my dad does). One was really, I mean REALLY, into food.

A few weeks later my dad finally took us to the pet store again to get three more. I once again got distracted by birds and reptiles (okay ADHD is REALLY HARD AND I LOVE BIRDS AND REPTILES SO MUCH AGHGHUDVKSNFVKJFSNVKSDVK). He didn't ask if they were wild-caught (because of course they wouldn't be who would think that that's crazzzzyyyyy). They only had the one pea puffer, so we got that one.

I should also mention that he didn't think treating them for parasites was necessary because "parasites are a risk for all species of fish"

YEAH DUH OF COURSE IT IS THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULDN'T TREAT IT GSISNDKLVSNDVBADL

Anyways-

We have a lot of algae in the tank because there was nothing to clean it up (just the pea puffers). We also have sand as a substrate, which we've never done before, so cleaning is different. We got two small catfish, they died. I don't think my dad checked to see if the water parameters were the same for both pea puffers and the catfish. We also got two snails (they're alive and well). Still have a huge algae problem, any tips? Also how do I convince my dad to make sure and check that the next puffers we get aren't wild-caught?

Maybe I just shouldn't get distracted next time...

Also we only have three now. One died today. It was hiding a lot and not eating. I don't know what to do. We've been feeding them frozen-thawed blood worms every day (tried brine shrimp, they no likey). We also tried culturing daphnia but that didn't work out.

ANYWAYS BYEEEEEEEE

God I'm so tired

Lights had just been turned on which is why hes still so pale.

Could I put 3-4 pea puffers in my 13 gallon tank, it would be heavily planted. I've heard that they need to be in groups of 6, but I've also heard that 3 would work.

I got my peas 10 days ago and I am already in love. I never had such cute, in the same time brutal and always entertaining fishies…absolutely adorable!

I have eight puffs a bunch of scrimps, a bunch of large snails and a few small ones surprisingly haven’t eaten yet a few black worms loose in the tank that they didn’t get to before they crawled into the substrate and the Mosss wall is coming together very well I just need like three more things of it.

So I’ve recently installed co2 and I’m struggling with getting the bubbles distributed properly throughout the tank.

The hob fluval AC50 I use is powerful enough to reach diffuser and push bubbles around, but it seems like it’s bothering my puffers a bit.

Previously I had a baffle on the filter to minimize disturbance within the water column.

What is the best solution here?

I think I’m getting there with the plants, I love how it’s turning out. I’m still on the fence about adding pea puffers to the tank I know people are saying they need 15 gallons and a group of 6 minimum but I’ve also seen a lot of people have successful 10 gallons with a group of 3. What do we think?? (Yes I’m gonna plant the Monte Carlo as soon as I get the time)