Also, I added a "Donations" link in the right-hand column of the page. I'm a poor college student and unfortunately fish can become fairly expensive and every little bit helps! Donations are accepted through PayPal using a PayPal account or credit/debit card, it's all legit and no one is going to get scammed! I will keep track of donations and the donating parties will be displayed and thanked in their own section on the blog!!!

I am back to school from my visit home and I came back to find that none of my fish had died! Great news! While I was home I went around and looked at some of the pet stores in Spokane and I was very pleased to find one that carries Bio-Spira, which is an amazing product that instant cycles fish tanks with all the necessary bacteria to get a tank going. I bought some of it to put into both my F8 tank and the DP tank to get them both right to where they should be. I started giving the DPs some bloodworms soaked in Gel-Tek to hopefully fix their parasite problems. I also did a water change in the snail tank and DP tank today. The snail tank is really taking off and there seem to be many, many snail babies hatching and relaying eggs, the exponential growth is astounding. I had the Clark's Feed special order me some Figure Eight's since they didn't seem to get in a shipment last Wednesday and they said that it could be up to two weeks before I get them, so it might be awhile before I get them set up and get some pictures, but they also said that potentially it could be as early as tomorrow, I'll get a call either way.

Today I gave the dwarf puffers their second dose of Jungle Parasite Clear so hopefully when I get back from going home this weekend they will be doing good! I managed to take a few pictures that turned out ok, but unfortunately with the medication in the tank it is pretty cloudy and it was hard to get a clear picture. You can also tell that they're not as plump as they should be and I attribute that to the internal parasites. I am headed home for the weekend so my roommate is going to be babysitting, although he does not yet know it, and the fish should do fine... Everything is stable enough in the tank that I shouldn't have to be there for a few days, but I am going to change some water tomorrow before I leave.
The other tank is still going through cycling, and I was finally able to measure a decent amount of ammonia in it so hopefully that bacteria will start growing quickly. I did a water change in there as well today and I am hoping that things don't go crazy if I am gone for a few days. I might not be able to get time to update the status of things tomorrow, so I won't be around for a few days as I am going back to my hometown with my girlfriend to spend time with my family.

Added some fake plants into the new tank today, it looks great to be honest with lots and lots of fun tunnels and hiding places. Hopefully the new puffers with enjoy it. I also got three more Tiger Barbs (you can just see one swimming in there) to the tank to hopefully help it cycle. They are actually kind of pretty but they are nippy towards one another.

The DP tank is good, I did a 25% water change today so I can treat them with another Jungle Parasite Clear tablet before I go home for the weekend. Anyway, just a short update with a few pictures, I really want to get some good dwarf puffer pics up here tomorrow.

I decided to go with a aragonite marine substrate for my F8 tank that looks like a bunch of finely crushed up corals, as well as rocks that look to be made of dead corals or something like that. The tank is very white in color and looks good, I'll get some pictures up soon. The substrate/rock has made the pH up to 8.2 which is exactly what my F8's are going to enjoy so that's great news. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any pure ammonia without additives so I am going to have to do a fish cycle. Hopefully it won't be a full month long cycle because the substrate claims to be "live" with the bacteria I need to get a successful cycle going. To cycle I decided to buy 3 tiger barbs because I was at Walmart already looking for the ammonia and they had some small barbs that looked pretty healthy and were cheap. They're in the new tank and they seem to be doing good. Walmart has a 90 day return policy for fish, so I think that once things are cycled I'm going to return the tiger barbs to the store to get my money back and to get rid of them so they won't have to die to the hands of a F8 puffer...

The DPs are all very active these days, although Hector and the male looked like they have internal parasites, despite them eating. So I bought some Jungle Parasite Clear product for their tank and dropped in a tablet tonight. It fizzed like mad and made the tank look like it was snowing, so hopefully that should clear up their diseases. It was very cheap and it would be nice to be able to rely on it as a solution to internal parasites since it is a common puffer sickness.

As soon as the new tank settles and isn't so cloudy I will get some pictures up!

Everything is still going good in the DP tank, the water conditions have changed a little, but maintaining the 3 20% water changes a week that I have been doing should get things back to a good level. The loaches are still doing their thing, the ottos seem to be fairly happy, but they kind of stay in the back righthand corner of the tank and stay together, and the DPs are as happy as ever with even Hector and the male competing for food during feeding time now which is a good sign. They seem to now not care that Achilles chases them and seem to be more inclined to stick up for themselves.

And in more exciting news! My girlfriend brought me her 10 gallon hexagon tank from home that she used for a short period of time and then abandoned and my original plan was to use that tank to put Achilles in by herself, but she seems to be allowing the other DPs to do fine so I am going to leave her in the main tank and I decided to set up a Brackish water tank and get some Figure Eight (F8) puffers. I got everything that I need to cycle to tank today and unfortunately was disappointed when I saw that Clark's Feed was out of F8s, but hopefully in a few weeks when I am ready to add one or two to the tank (I am undecided on how many) I will be able to get them. Brackish water is going to be a new challenge, but I am very excited to get things rolling with the tank. I added in rocks and some Eco-Complete (Although I am going to go without plants for this tank) and I threw in some fish food and a snail that someone had given me to help get the ammonia cycle started. I'll have to monitor the water on the new tank carefully to make sure that the right kind of bacteria is growing, but it should be fun! I cranked up the heater on the new tank up to 85F which should help allow the bacteria to form as well as allowing for the filter to create quite a waterfall effect. I also added some of the biological filter media from the DP tank into the filter of the new tank, so hopefully it will only be a short time before things get rolling. I really don't want to use fish to cycle because I think it is kind of cruel, but I might have to. I looked all over for pure Ammonia today but they just don't seem to sell it without some perfumes and other chemicals added. Anyway! I'm excited for the Figure Eights they're very cool.

Everything is going great in the tank so far. The loaches still seem to be ignored by the puffers and the ottos are doing their thing all over the glass and the plants. I actually have noticed that since the addition of the new fish and the new volcanic rock the puffers have become much more civil to one another. Because the loaches have taken over the gravel level of the tank, the puffers have moved up into the mid/high range of the tank. They have been swimming in groups, which is something I had never seen before, but when I go to feed them, Achilles once again will chase the others away from the food source and eat his fill. The loaches have been eating from the very first feeding which is great news and they seem to enjoy their new habitat. Hopefully things will continue on this path.

On a side note, since adding the new fish I had noticed an increase in the nitrate levels as well as a slight increase in the nitrite. I did a 20% water change with 4 drops of Prime to hopefully get rid of that nitrite, but I'd like for the nitrate to stay at about that level because of all the plants. I have been supplementing the tank with liquid carbon and the plants seem to be doing ok.

Added the loaches and ottos into the tank this afternoon. The Khuliis immediately went into hiding, which was good to see, but as soon as I fed the puffers, they also came out to get a bite. Fortunately even when Achilles saw the loaches he kind of ignored them and swam away, hopefully this will be a good sign as to their future. I don't want to come home from dinner and see three dead loaches. The Ottos that I got are huge this time, and they look very healthy, which is great. I think I'm going to move Achilles into a private tank at my girlfriend's place as soon as I get the chance.

Bad day to be a fish other than Achilles. After the fish had settled down from the pet store they had been fighting like mad, so I added three more plants to the tank to break their lines of sight and to give the little guys some more hiding spots. Things seemed to be going fine this week, but now the fish are back at it again. Achilles chases the male and Hector all around the tank and she won't let them eat very much. Hector is looking pretty bad, she mad have internal parasites, but she won't even eat so I think she might just be starving. I still think that I'll be getting the new fish today, but I am going to have to make some decisions about what I'm going to do to stop the fighting, I don't think that Achilles will let the other fish last for very long and I'd much rather have three puffers than one.

So I was looking down into my snail jail today right before I did a water change and I found that there were several little gatherings of white things within little jello looking sacks. I assume that these finally have to be snail eggs! I can't be positive, but I don't know what else it might be. Right above the eggs you can see a piece of my substrate stuck to it and some snail poo as well. I am pretty excited to get some baby snails growing because my snails absolutely love snails and love hunting them.

I also did a 20% water change in my DP tank and a 60% water change in my snail jail. I think that I will be buying my khulis and ottos tomorrow if my water levels are still good, and they should be! I am pretty excited to see how things work out with the new additions to my tank. The fish are still looking good, but I wish that Achilles would give Hector a chance to eat some more, she is looking pretty thin.

There is a picture of the new set up with all of the plants and the three Dwarf Puffers, soon I will be adding three Khuli Loaches and two Ottos to the tank, hopefully on Friday or Saturday. Everything looks great right now and the fish are all healthy, but unfortunately things didn't start so smoothly...

I wandered into a small local pet shop called Clark's Feed here in Bellingham, Washington where I go to school at Western Washington University with the goal of getting a beta for my dorm room while my roommate was going to get a goldfish. After looking around the tanks I saw the DPs and instantly fell in love. I watched them with their small eyes darting around the tank and saw how small they were and thought it would be a great idea to get some for a small tank and set it up in my room. I even went as far as to call my girlfriend and ask her if she had any problem with me getting a tank started.

When I returned home I did some researching on the Internet about the fish and found my way to dwarfpuffers.com which I highly recommend to anyone that is looking into getting into Dwarf Puffers. After getting the new tank and all the necessary equipment for the new fish, I returned to Clark's Feed and talked to one of their employees about what kind of substrate I would need for a new planted tank and how long I would need to let the tank cycle. He informed me that they had had great success with Eco-Complete which was supposed to come with all the live and necessary bacteria of a tank that had been cycled for three weeks. I was quite skeptical about how it could be possible to get a cycled tank in 24 hours without having to use fish or anything else, but in the end I tried it. The fish store people talked me into getting five puffers, even though I knew that was far too many for the 10 gallon tank I had set up. I figured that some of the fish might be weak and die so maybe 5 wouldn't be such a bad idea.

After the first couple of days it became evident that something was wrong. The fish were in their new tank, but they had become skiddish and hid all day at the bottom of the tank with little to no activity. I started doing large water changes and one of the poor puffers had died after only a few days. The largest of the new fish had internal parasites and died shortly after that as well. Two down, three to go. I was quite upset over the loss of two of my new pets so I invested in a master test kit and found that my ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels were all high and probably caused the deaths of my new fish. I began doing 20% water changes three times and week and after only a few days of using 3 drops of Prime for each new gallon of water, everything went down to zero and everything was great. There was a very noticeable difference the behavior of the fish and I was able to get a better understanding of each of their individual personalities.

One of the fish was just plain mean. We eventually ended up naming this fish Achilles, mostly because my girlfriend was reading the Iliad and commented on how Achilles had chased Hector around the city of Troy three times before killing him. Hector soon became the name of one of the other fish, the smallest of the three in fact. Ironically, I'm quite sure that both Achilles and Hector are female, but the names are too perfect to change, my one male is very dark and clearly has the telltale "wrinkles" of a male Dwarf Puffer he also remains nameless for now. Achilles was so mean in fact, that I ended up going to the fish store and buying three more larger plants to fill the empty spots in my tank so they the littler guys could hide better. Once I added the three new plants (compact sword, foxtail frill, and a crypt) the fish have become much more friendly to each other. I have not yet seen Achilles chase either of the two fish around the tank like she used to, and they all seem much more happy having large leaves to fall asleep on.

This weekend I plan on getting three Khuli Loaches and two Otto Catfish for my tank, the Khulis should be fine with all of the hiding that I have and the DPs love so much. The Ottos should love all of the plants, they have to be loaded with algae by now. I also have a blossoming 1 gallon snail jail full of snails, I can't wait for them to breed so that my main tank can get some snails in it for the DPs to hunt.

So in imititation of kirkp from the dwarfpuffers.com forum I have decided to keep a blog of my adventures through my first fish tank and my new experience with the Dwarf Puffer. Unfortunately, I should be studying for a Physics midterm and I will have to postpone background information on the new tank as well as pictures and current events until after I get a grip on my studying.