The Puffer Forum

My puffer is fond of me and i hand feed him/her often, is it alright if i touch, him/her? Or might that damage his/her outermost layer?
He/she likes to come up to the top and swim around my fingers and i touch him/her quite often.

This is a Green Spotted Puffer. Thanks for any replies!

Ahhh! I can't imagine it would do any harm. Love to see what others say. I'm sure you are risking getting bit at some point, but I've heard of people giving their puffers a belly rub

Gwen

The risk of getting bit is always there. I think the likelihood of getting bit increases as a puffer mature or when a puffer is really hungry.

Every time u dip your hand into the water, there is always a chance of your hand contaminating the water or vice versa. Not to mention that u could damage their slim coat. I will never attempt to touch any living fish bare handed just for fun, unless really necessary.

Yes he does bite quite often, but not always. When he does bite he never really bites hard, but once i had just fed him a snail, so he had his teeth in mega crush mode, and i stuck my hand in and he did break my skin.

Well if that's the case i will avoid touching him, even though hes very cute and appears to like me.

But just so you guys know, i always rinse my hands at the sink WITHOUT SOAP very well before i reach into any of my tanks.

No fish, and especially no puffer should be exposed to the hazards of being touched by humans. It is disruptive to their slime coat and can damage their thin elastic skin itself. Petting any fish is terrible practice. I very strongly disagree with those unaware of how important an intact skin and intact slime coat is to fish. Lack of knowledge is no excuse. Warnings about handling fish are common, and especially so for scaleless fish such as puffers.

Do not do it!

Hand-feeding (by fingers rather than tongs or chopsticks) puffers automatically qualifies you for the Darwin Awards.

Don't do that either.