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Monster Puffer Fish Added To Aquarium

By King of DIY on

Speaker 1: Today is the day Tyrese, the Fahaka Puffer gets moved to his new aquarium. I'm just doing a quick water change right now. Just a last minute one, I like to do this before I move fish to it sometimes, especially with a newly established tank. Although, we will be taking a tremendous amount of established biological media and putting it into the filter below and creating an already cycled tank. As for this tank, if you guys don't remember, it's just a simple background from Aqua Decor.

We also have some fake rocks although they don't look like it. Piled up some substrate over here, turned one of those rocks upside down, filled it with planted tank soil, and planted some really simple and easy to keep plants. Will they survive in this aquarium? Is another question I think Tyrese might see it a different way and want to rip things apart, but let's go check on him before he gets moved. Look at you, you chunk. Tyrese is getting big. If you don't remember Tyrese was named-- My son named him.

Speaker 2: The puffer’s name shall be.

Speaker 1: Make them wait. What is it?

Speaker 2: It’s.

Speaker 1: Frank Junior.

Speaker 2: Tyrese.

Speaker 1: Tyrese?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: Get out.

I think he's named all the popular fish on my channel from-- He named Frank and he named Tyrese. Tyrese is a Fahaka Puffer. He's like seven, eight inches now. Perhaps I'll get an opportunity to measure him. He's got a full belly because he just ate. I probably shouldn't have fed him but I am putting him in with some smaller tank mates and I don't want him to get hungry overnight and think he could chase them around.

He is doing quite well in here. This is the type of Puffer that gets quite large. I consider him a monster-sized Puffer because there's really only a couple freshwater or a few freshwater puffers that get over like six inches. He's definitely going to be a foot long. He could get potentially bigger, but that 120 gallon is definitely a good-sized aquarium for him. As far as tank mates. Let's go see how they're doing.

I've already started to drain this tank to make it a lot easier to not-- Why do you follow me here every time? It'll make catching all the fish a lot easier. I'm just going to remove these logs. This is all the biological media that for the most part is going in with Tyrese's canister filter. It is all biological, meaning it's already cycled. You can see that we do have some large Uaru, we got to move them as well. His tank mates are actually all of these Cardinal Tetras.

They're all doing fine especially with some big fish. Not all fish eat tiny fish. I've tried to show that a number of times, especially with a two-foot long Asian Arowana with a bunch of Emperor Tetras. Although we do have some Emperor Tetras in here, they're going in with the Uaru. Would you stop? All I'm going to do here is I'm going to finish up that water change, finish draining this tank as much as I can, and will get moving. To make things a little easier as this drains, I'm going to start removing this wood from the tank. It is hollow so it will drain out.

I need to get the biological media now so I can get that filter up and running before we move the fish. Not that it's a timely matter, but I do like to do it in a certain order. The Puffer, actually all these fish would be fine in their tanks without any filtration for a short while, at least a couple days before when we start to fill it up, it becomes a problem. What I'm going to do here is simply net out these bowls of biological media as much as I can. Well, I'm actually going to take them all and get these canisters filters up and running. I've had these running for three years now. Completely saturated in beneficial bacteria. If you remember, these used to be bright white.

Got almost all of them. Let's see what we can do with these canisters. What I plan to do here, there's four trays. I've already taken out three. The bottom one is for mechanical just has a sponge in it. These top three will contain all of the biological media, which is this stuff here. Now, what I'm doing and how I'm able to do this, is I'm basically taking highly established biological media from another filter and putting it in another.

This is equivalent to doing like 100% water change on your aquarium basically starting off with a completely freshwater in the aquarium, but I have a fully cycled filter. I've done this countless times. Now, because I can't double the layer up like put another layer of these on top, these won't actually close properly. Maybe I can get a few in here. When this goes down, these are touching. What I'm going to do here is take some other ceramic media that these actually came with and sprinkle that all throughout the top of these. I want no wasted space.

Now, it's ready. All right, parameters of the tank inside and the tank outside match. I’ll put all these guys in at once which should-- I love watching fish swim out of the net. These guys are going to do just fine. A little bit of uneaten food in here and stuff too. It will be interesting to see what Tyrese does with all these guys in here now. This changes the entire dynamic of that tank though doesn't it, adding all these fish in here? Once these guys get used to the tank, they're already kind of covered up. Once they're fully used to this tank, they'll swim throughout it just like before.

I think they're going to like this one a little bit more. It is more geared towards them. Let's get Tyrese. I'm really curious to see what he's going to do. It's almost like it's out. We might have to wait till tomorrow to find out if everybody's going to do okay. I think it's going to be just fine personally, but we'll see. Let's get Tyrese.

Got to be quick. I didn't grab the camera to take it over there. I just grabbed him in a two-litre pitcher. Look at the size of him. Oh my, he's getting big. He's got to go straight in. Chill out a little buddy. He's already eyeing up the other fish. He was going to hightail it to the bottom but then suddenly the little guys are just like, “Wait. Who are you?.” Look at him. I figured this is what he was going to do. Oh, what a brute. He went in behind the background here in the crevices. Like I said there's a lot of crevices in here to the point where that massive Puffer can hide. He's going to love it.

I think he will probably remove some substrate and hide back there longer term. Even some of the fish are already out. Over here and some are up there. It's going to be just fine. They're too fast for Tyrese, too small. He’s uninterested, he's on a steady diet of shrimp and clams and that sort of thing and he loves it. I'm surprised his chunk of a butt fits back there. Let's give him an evening. We'll check back tomorrow, see how everybody is doing.

It is the next day approximately 12 hours later. All of that I realized when I was editing I looked at the timestamp. I did that at two o’clock in the morning. My apologies for not having much energy during that time, but I really need to get that stuff done. These guys should have been moved quite some time ago. All of the tetras as you can see are out, they’re swimming around. Tyrese has been out as well. You guys remember when we left him he was hiding back here. He's come over here and dug himself a little pit. I don't know if you can see the indentation, but he digs himself a little pit and he lays there.

Right now, he's just kind of exploring the tank a little bit looking around. I did have to adjust the flow patterns of the wavemaker which was pretty simple. I just slowed it down and the fish all started to come out. Originally when it came out this morning, they were all just right under the powerhead staying out of the way of the flow and Tyrese here, of course-- Basically, all the fish were just right here. I turn the flow down a little bit and now they're out.

A lot of times the fish are kind of doing that. Maybe take a look at diffusing the flow in the aquarium and or adjusting it in some manner to see if maybe the flow is a little too strong. Tyrese definitely likes this area and I like that he's there, we're going to see him a lot more. You can see he's actually darkened up and colored up a lot better. His lateral lines or his stripes along the [unintelligible 00:09:40] are definitely far more prominent in this tank, of course, but the tank is tremendously darker as well.

I think he's going to do just fine in this tank. I think he's going to love it. I'd love to know what you guys think though. What do you guys think of this tank overall? I really like it a lot. It's going to be interesting to see what happens long term. All the plants are fine but I cannot say that for the Uaru. We moved those guys last night too and that was a disaster. You guys will see that video shortly. If you do want to see it and or follow the progress of this tank, make sure you subscribe if you're not already.

Oh, the video is about to end and you want to get out into the middle of the tank, right Tyrese? Is that what you're going to do? Anyways, see you guys in the next video.

About King of DIY

Joey is THE King of DIY, and when he built his gallery of aquariums he chose the Custom Aquariums rack system with 120-gallon tanks...a lot of them!

Joey Mullen is also known as the king of DIY, uarujoey or the DIY fishkeeper on social media. Providing education and inspiration for aquarium enthusiasts on YouTube, he is also the author of The Ultimate DIY Handbook; for the DIY Aquarist. His channel is about educating all levels of fish tank hobbyists who are passionate about caring for fish and keeping an aquarium of their own. Joey's aquarium rack systems were custom made by our professional fish tank engineers, here at Custom Aquariums.

Please watch the King of DIY's videos for some helpful information and great tips on diy aquarium keeping.

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