Help! Figure 8 puffer pacing and not eating

[piffpuffer]

Thank you, my puff is so happy and i could watch him explore for hours!! He must be too excited about the upgrade from quarantine to even glass surf for more than a couple seconds haha hes so cute!!

NT Labs is a UK brand I think, LFS recommended it, that should've been the first sign of trouble lol, LFS doesn't have the best conditions, whole reason why I wanted my puff out of there asap

How many MTS did you have to start to have soo many of them? I'll keep a close eye on this, I'm still on the fence about them

Also, my puff got scared when I was putting a cover on the glass lid for the night (lid only covers 3/4 of the tank surface), he jumped up and hit his head on the glass lid twice, two audible thunk sounds. He's swimming fine after and continued his exploration of this tank so he should be fine right...? Have there been any cases of puffs getting injured from hitting their heads? a quick google tells me other types of fish have died from it!! i might just lower the water level a bit more so he doesnt hit his head

he's terrified of tissue paper, darts away like crazy and jumps when he sees it, the lid cover i use is also white so I think he's scared of the colour white. Maybe i should switch to a mesh lid, only issue with that is that the aerator is very lively and without the glass lid, the vapours get everywhere!

 

[Deadeye]

The best way to reduce jumping is with dim lights and floating cover (like duckweed or hornwort). It makes them feel more comfortable less likely to get startled and jump as a result.
I wouldn’t be super worried about it hurting itself - I don’t think they have the speed or mass to do much damage the way an arowana or wolf fish could.

As for the mts, I think it’s largely a personal decision. If they’re covering every surface it’s a lot but snail eaters will keep the population decently low.

 

[phreeflow]

Thank you, my puff is so happy and i could watch him explore for hours!! He must be too excited about the upgrade from quarantine to even glass surf for more than a couple seconds haha hes so cute!!

NT Labs is a UK brand I think, LFS recommended it, that should've been the first sign of trouble lol, LFS doesn't have the best conditions, whole reason why I wanted my puff out of there asap

How many MTS did you have to start to have soo many of them? I'll keep a close eye on this, I'm still on the fence about them

Also, my puff got scared when I was putting a cover on the glass lid for the night (lid only covers 3/4 of the tank surface), he jumped up and hit his head on the glass lid twice, two audible thunk sounds. He's swimming fine after and continued his exploration of this tank so he should be fine right...? Have there been any cases of puffs getting injured from hitting their heads? a quick google tells me other types of fish have died from it!! i might just lower the water level a bit more so he doesnt hit his head

he's terrified of tissue paper, darts away like crazy and jumps when he sees it, the lid cover i use is also white so I think he's scared of the colour white. Maybe i should switch to a mesh lid, only issue with that is that the aerator is very lively and without the glass lid, the vapours get everywhere!

You don’t have to change the lid, it’ll get used to you and everything in the tank in due time. They are very personable and will soon follow you around. Have no clue how many MTS I started with. They came in on a batch of plants that I was careful to inspect and quarantine.

I had two types of MTS: large type that grew to about an inch and another type that only grew to 0.25”. The larger ones were fine and I’d keep them again but that tiny species bred like crazy. My congo puffers wouldn’t eat them

 

[piffpuffer]

Thank you both! Getting some amazon frogbit today since i can use them for my shrimp breeding tank too once that one is running. Turns out they can tolerate up to 1.0079 SG, so that's perfect.