The Puffer Forum

I think he said he was getting off the internets to appreciate the three dimensional world fully, but I can't imagine someone won't tell him.

In my last e-mail with Mr. Watson, he said he would really like to know if anyone is able to naturally spawn them, so lets get crackin!

Who wants to go find out what triggers the spawn in the wild?
... let me rephrase that. Who wants fund me to go find out what triggers the spawn in the wild?

I remembered a year ago, my friend has said about someone
breeding a type of pufferfish(unsure of species) in northern part of malaysia/thailand. It was said that this fisherman created a pond to breed this pufferfish

This was just word of mouth though, I am unsure of the fact.
I did not inquire more about this thing since I had no interest in pufferfish back then lol.

Still, when it comes to care of fish, I have very little confidence of my fellow asian brothers to take this think seriously. I mean, some pet shop can't care less about fish and some fish farm I have seen are absolutely overstocked and I have heard of news that fish farm are feeding human waste to their livestock. So yeah..

It's so cool to find out that GSPs can only be fertilized in marine conditions! Thanks for emailing Dr. Watson, Jase!

I was at the pet store with a friend the other day, so I decided to wander over to the fish section. I don't have any tanks setup anymore, but I thought I would take a look at what they had. I ran across the latest issue of TFH, so I thought I'd venture a peak. Somehow I completely overlooked the big "Breeding the Green Spotted Puffer" label on the front cover. Casually I flipped through the magazine, until I came to a page with a picture showing a tank full of tiny little GSPs! It was one of those "spewed coffee everywhere" moments. Immediately I purchased the magazine and tried reading the article. I say tried because I became so excited that I seemed to forget how to read. All I could do was look at the pictures. My friend found it entertaining how thrilled I was.

I can't say how phenomenal I think it is that someone has figured out how to breed these bad boys on a commercial scale. Hopefully it will eventually become possible for a serious hobbyist to perform too. Although at up to 7,000 eggs per batch, you'd have your work cut out for you.
The article was short, but also stated that there would be multiple papers coming out, and also seemed to hint that further research will be done on other species of puffers.

Anyway, nice to see that puffer knowledge is still being advanced. I don't believe that the paper is out yet, as I can't find it, but I will post a link to it as soon as I find anything out. Although I'm sure many of you are also keeping an eye out for it.

Maybe GSPs only go into the ocean to breed. Don't Archerfish do that as well?

Could be, I guess. It's very frustrating that we know so little about these fish that we love so much.

That is probably exactly what happens. I read somewhere that in the wild adult GSPs live in fresh/low end brackish rivers.

Actually, GSP's live in a mid brackish environment, mouths of rivers.

Jase wrote:Craig Watson, Director of the Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory, wrote me back with answers to a few of our questions:

We attempted natural spawning for over a year, and then standard induced spawning techniques using injections, all to no avail. We developed a new technique (which we will also be publishing) we are calling "ovarian lavage" whereby we flood the ovaries with HCG, a spawning aid, and the females are ovulating ~36 hours later. We are then expressing the eggs and sperm into a bowl, adding seawater to trigger the sperm, and then broadcasting the eggs into aquaria.

We just spawned several of our first generation fish that were 11 months old.

We do that with Salmon stock here... Salmon a BW/SW fish spawns in FW. The HCG would differientiate the males from the females no? It seems like a simple solution .. I wonder how it was over looked for so long? One would assume that the eggs are carried into BW by the female , fertalized and adhere. Babies live in BW then move to SW.

Simulating a natural enviroment .. you would need multi teird tanks... starting low BW and increacing to SW. You'd have to be able to cycle the SW back at a fraction of the SG (check valve) while adding FW... I have a tank that can do that :0

Like most fish, the secret will be in the spawning trigger= Photo period, water chemistry, specific density, temperature or all of the above. A friend is presently having some pretty good success with monodactylus sebae due in part to discovering what initiates spawning behavior in that species. I'll wager that GSPs are similar. I'll have to go back & re-read Craig's TFH article. He used to be the Florida State extension agent when I was working @ the fish farms there.

Puffers have, only since widespread genetic analyses became practical, become a popular science tool - as they have "clean" genomes (uncommon in vertebrates).

I am delighted that someone has accomplished all this, and equally so that hobbyists are finally seeing just how little is known about about their lives. I am a bit shocked that their preferred spawning is SW and nor BW. FW was unlikely to me. I expected them to follow the style of Monos - live in SW and spawn in BW, fry grow in the tidal areas and mangrove swamps. They must still spawn in the near-shore area, as the fry are always seen in the BW zone - whether the water is at the moment FW or BW or SW. Adults do and have been caught miles upstream, but that is not rare - so do whales, dolphins, some sharks, and large number of real fish. It only counts if they breed there (salmon).

In the long run, that does not matter a lot to hobbyists. What should matter to us is what water condition keeps them alive and healthy longest. That is what matters to me,at least. That is also the reason we shift them to SW - we can keep that better and easier than BW, except perhaps the very lowest BW such as suits F-8s best, where the cost issue is not so great.

What is likely to occur is that they will be more common in in LFS in FW, and less expensive after the "new" has worn off. There is a good chance they will be healthier - the money from forced captive breeding is as laboratory specimens, not the hobby trade. But do remember that commercial breeding of DPs spread fish with IPs all over the place - those were strictly hobby trade and not the best quality fish by any means. PP was around during that era - not long after the first hobby breedings of that fish. It was a mess, as I suspect that she will agree. IPs could be the major topic on the lists and this forum in its early days - worse than wild-caught.

I was shocked deeply at the experimenters feeding the fry flake! Don't they know what puffers are? They are very highly modified fish, with rodent teeth, fantastic folded/pleated skin, no ribs, and the knack for storing bacterial toxins as a final defense - eat me and you die! Rodent teeth means constant growth of biting teeth - which may be and are here highly modified - and flake has all the crunch of kleenex or TP. I can see it now, GSPs in every chain, all with overgrown teeth. The MS-222 folks will make a mint - buy stock now!

What, me a cynic?

RTR wrote: I can see it now, GSPs in every chain, all with overgrown teeth. The MS-222 folks will make a mint - buy stock now!

Hey, Intel told us that 20 years ago about LucasArts .... their dream is not there yet, but it would have been worth the $$ if someone had listened then. Too bad Ms-222 isn't proprietary.

OVARIAN LAVAGE ROCKS!!!

P.s. Where do I buy the catheter and fish hormones? No... wait, I love T. Nigrovidrus but Idk if I'm ready for a few thousand fry.... yet.

Well, many moons ago it was suggested to byt hearing aide stocks, especially some with hot R&D departments. They did not pay off, but the ones that did have well covered the ones that went belly up. We now have the second generation of folks in need of hearing aides due to excessive noise in their youth. From the passing cars I hear while I am out in the yard, the next generation is doing the same damage. First it was largely an American disability (not unlike obesity issues), but now it seems to be the whole developed world.