New find - takifugu fasciatus

[PetPirate]

Found this today at the local aquarium,

Takifugu fasciatus, or "Obscure Puffer"

It is apparently a migratory fish local to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. They inhabit the bottom parts of the river and are omnivores.

They obviously like burrowing in the substrate - although appeared to be fairly active. The local area would be temperate to subtropical and freshwater to brackish. No mention as to max size, but these were at least 8".

Photos (c) me -- but not very good as (as is always the case) I didn't have my own camera handy.

[kass]

Nice!

[Hilly]

Impressive looking beasts. Do these also go by Takifugu Obscurus or are they a slightly different species because they look very similar to me.

[Corvus]

I'm quite sure its a Takifugu ocellatus

Takifugu obscurus has a different color pattern, but is quite similar.

"fasciatus" is a specific name among puffers formerly used as Tetrodon fasciatus (without "a"), which is a obsolete synonym for Marilyna darwinii

[Corvus]

@Hilly: You are right. Looking again at the pictures maybe T. obscurus.

If it has white lines/spots it's more likely a T. obscurus if such spots/lines are absent it's a T. ocellatus.

[Corvus]

To add to the confusion Tokiharu Abe (1911-1996, the guy to whom M. abei was named by Roberts) thought obscurus was a subspecies of ocellatus.

In addition Kottelat (2001) thinks Fugu should be the right genus, not Takifugu.

Funny.

Summary: Fugu ocellatus is probably the proper name, until a differential diagnosis of obscurus is published. I am not aware that this has been done, yet.

[Hilly]

If it has white lines/spots it's more likely a T. obscurus if such spots/lines are absent it's a T. ocellatus.

All the pictures I have seen of T. Ocellatus on here have orange banding around the saddle and spot marks. Are there different colour morphs of this species?

Also do you have a link to the documentation that reclassifies them some of the Tetraodons as Monotretus.

[Corvus]

All the pictures I have seen of T. Ocellatus on here have orange banding around the saddle and spot marks. Are there different colour morphs of this species?

Some lines are yellow, some are orange. Maybe also dependent of the mood of the puffer. Abe described obscurus as a subspecies of ocellatus.

Also do you have a link to the documentation that reclassifies them some of the Tetraodons as Monotretus.

Commonly used Monotretus and Monotreta are wrong spellings. Kottelat explained that Monotrete is a valid genus in:

Kottelat M. 2001. Nomenclatural status of names of tetraodontiform fishes based on Bibron’s unpublished work. Zoosyst 23: 605–618.


Several subsequent (and earlier) studies use this genus for most SE Asian puffers formerly known as the target group as well as the predatory puffers of this area. Some are:

Kottelat, M., 2000 Diagnosis of a new genus and 64 new species of fishes from Laos (Teleostei: Cyprinidae, Balitoridae, Bagridae, Syngnathidae, Chaudhuriidae and Tetraodontidae). J. South Asian Nat. Hist. 5(1):37-82.

Kottelat, M., 2001 Fishes of Laos. WHT Publications Ltd., Colombo 5, Sri Lanka.

Kottelat, M. and E. Widjanarti, 2005 The fishes of Danau Sentarum National Park and the Kapuas Lakes area, Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia. Raffles Bull. Zool. Supplement (13):139-173.

[Corvus]

If it has white lines/spots it's more likely a T. obscurus if such spots/lines are absent it's a T. ocellatus.

All the pictures I have seen of T. Ocellatus on here have orange banding around the saddle and spot marks.

With "whites lines or spots" I mean lines or spots not associated with the saddle and spot at the dorsal. Saddle and dorsal are bordered with yellow/orange lines in both species/subspecies/variations.

[swips]

Looks like the same fish I have
see ug.php/v/User_Galleries/swips/
definately T. obscurus
very active and does like to lay in the sand, not so much burrow, which I've never seen mine completely cover himself as other puffers do but more of kind of throws some sand on top of himself as a partial disquise while resting. Whenever he sees some action he is up in a flash though and very active most of the day. I've only had mine for about a few weeks now and slowly bringing up the salinity from straight fw. He is about 7"-8" and will eat a good handfull of frozen Krill in one feeding if I let him. Not a shy fish in the least. He will practically swim out of the water to grab pieces of Krill from my fingers, similar to how Koi grab food! I tend to only feed every couple days maybe in between days he will get one or two FD Krill as a snack when I'm in a hurry. He does not seem to be much of a piscivore. The tank he went into had some N. multifasciatus in there and I figured I'd leave a few as snacks. After 2 weeks they were still untouched so I decided to try making it easier for the puffer by removing all the shells and rockwork. As I was increasing salinity they would not last too much longer anyway. Well a shelldweller without a shell is almost like a fish out of water. the puffer got hold of him pretty quick. One crunch from those massive jaw muscles and shelly was off to a better place. Problem was the puffer just spat him right back out uneaten - jettisoned like a sour grape.

I still have him in a 25 gallon tall but probably needs more room than that. Not quite sure where he will end up though after having him for a few weeks I'd say most important would be keeping him in a good high traffic location is more important than having a huge swimming area in a less traveled fishroom type setup. Kitchen seems to be ideal for a fish like this! I would say kind of like a parrot, they need attention more than a big aviary with no attention.

[puffer_puff]

So, are we all taking what swips said as conclusive?