I've had my puffer for a week now. Right now he only eats ghost shrimp. I bought him 2 days after my lfs got him and he wasn't even eating there. They had ordered him just for me(the one i had wanted that they had was sold a week earlier). So I ignored my better instincts telling me not to buy a fish not eating yet, but he seems pretty happy in my tank now. I just added as utube mod to my mrc skimmer and its pulling out a fair amount of crap. I'm going to test my nitrates tomorrow to see where they're at. There are some inverts in my tank, a peppermint shrimp and some hermits, as well as a ton of small featherdusters, but they were hitchhikers on my live rock so I know they are potential food.
I'm not concerned about my Nitrate levels, i know my Puffer is fine with this amount, just having a decent level of Nitrate was a good opportunity to test the effects of sugar dosing on said levels.
If you want to see the main thread i read at --, just pm me and I'll send you the link. Sugar or vodka promote bacterial growth which feed on nitrate and phos, the primary danger is that the rapid growth reduces o2 in the tank, so its not a good idea to dose unless you have a skimmer and good flow. You also need to be sure to start dosing in small amounts. Another danger is that you can reduce your nitrate and phos levels so much as to be a danger to corals that need low levels of these chemicals in the tank, but i have no corals. I went with sugar over vodka because I didn't see any advantage to doing one over the other and I have sugar readily available.
