They are a brackish fish. The easiest way to adapt
them to salt water, is to put them in water that is
50% sea water strength for 24 hours, and then put
them in the salt water aquarium. They may go for a
long time without causing harm to your inhabitants,
but eventually you will probably start having such
problems. They don't do well in strait fresh water.
The ideal salinity for them is around 50% seawater
strength. They will do better in your reef tank than
in strait fresh water. There is a "dwarf puffer"
that does well in strait fresh water.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets


Tristan wrote on 1/30/2007 1:36 PM:
I took up the salt .001 every other day or two. Once I got it to
1.020 I started to go with every 2 or so days.....Initially once I
attainted 1.020, I held it at 1.020 for about a week just to observe
the puffer....then proceeded to increase it .001 every couple of three
days or so.

One thing that worked out perfect for me was the small PICO sized tank
I used. Since it was just a little fellow anyhow, it was plenty big
enough for him. I ofund out that each teaspoonful of Instant Ocean
salt raised my sg up that .001 so allI had to do was scoop out a cup
or two of water, mix in a teaspoonfull of I/O and pour it back into
the PICO tank each time I increased the SG level.

Looking at that puffer now and recalling what it looked like before
its like night and day in how it looks. I thought it may have been
just the lights that wewre over it when it wa in the 29 gal FW tank,
but its definately due to it being in sal****er and feed a good mix of
marine pelleted feed, and frozen homebrew food.

Not to sound like a know-it-all, but you did use synthetic sea salt
right..Odds are you probably did. A lfs here told me it owuld not work
as they are only able to handle brackish water, but thtas not true as
they migrate to full salt water by adulthood, and only migrate back to
brackish on their way to fresh when they spawn.... They topld me they
tried a few times and failed as well, but then I found out they were
using regular aquarium salt, not synthetic sea salts.





On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:08:55 -0500, Add Homonym
wrote:

Tristan wrote:
I had aquired a Green Leopard Spot Puffer a few months back, and after
a bit of reading up on it, found out its really a sal****er fish. I
set out to acclimate it over a period of time from FW to SW. It has
been in 1.025/026 SG water for some time now and does not even compare
to what it looked like in FW..


How fast did you do it? (ie: how much salt added to how much water over
what period of time?)

I tried doing this myself TWICE, and each time puffie died after about 1
week, way before I got anywhere near 1.025.



-------
I forgot more about ponds and koi than I'll ever know!