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!