New to puffers.

[Mewtwo 89]

Hello, I am Mewtwo 89 and for quite a while I've liked puffers but up until now I couldn't justify giving up valuable tank space for a single fish. Currently I have a 40 gallon breeder that I'm loking to set up and am looking towards getting one of the lurking predatory puffers. A hairy puffer seems to be ideal but I've not yet ruled out the idea of finding a puffer that will spend its time on the bottom waiting for prey to pass by but also will tolerate others of his kind. A duo or trio of puffers would be ideal in my mind.
I look forward to meeting other people here, especially pufferpunk as I've read a few things written about her on here and other places.

[Pufferpunk]

I almost NEVER see my Hairy puffer. He spends 100% of his time in a cave. I even have to put his food in the opening of the cave, so he'll eat. He also will only eat live worms--nothing else. Other folks here have much more personable Hairy puffers than mine though.

Have you considered a light-brackish tank for Figure 8 puffers? You could keep 3 in there & also a few other BW fish in a 40g.

Or there is a FW Spotted Congo puffer that has made an appearance in the past few years. They are happy, active fish but quite $$$ still, since they're new. I do believe folks are starting to be sucessful at breeding them, so I'm hoping their price will go down soon. You could keep 3 of them in a 40g.

[Mewtwo 89]

I figured they would hide a lot and it no longer bothers me and I was planning to make a cave of sorts that'll give the fish a place to hide but not fully out of sight. If live worms is all mine will eat then it would be no problem as I have a readily accessible source of night crawlers.

I have not considered brackish yet because I would prefer to stay strictly freshwater until I get a few more years of experience before I move into brackish or saltwater.

Tetraodon miurus? I had gotten my choices down to Tetraodon miurus and Tetraodon baileyi and the baileyi nudged out the miurus by a narrow margin because of the physical appearance but had I known that miurus was able to be kept together then they would have been my very first choice.
For me personally as long as I enjoy the fish enough I'm willing to spend a decent amount of money. From the prices I've seen while doing research on them I'm comfortable with their costs. The main challenge for me would be tracking them down I believe

.

[Pufferpunk]

Baileyi is by far, one of the coolest fish I've ever seen!

[Mewtwo 89]

Tetradon baileyi is indeed a quite interesting fish, if it could be kept in a group setting with others of its own kind then it would be near perfect.