Red Eyed Puffer Laying Eggs

[Brodmeister]

I'll give a background on the situation. I have a couple tanks, the one that contains my red eyed puffers is a 47 gallon tank. It has 2 external filters, no bio wheel and a heater that fluctuates the temperature from 79-83F.

2 months ago the tank contained 3 large angelfish, 3 3inch red eyed puffers and 5 skirt tetras.

then one month ago everything hit the fan. the angels started to miss complete fins, 3 tetras were ripped in half. Then it got really weird, i fed blood worms to the tank and one puffer came and followed to the bottom of the tank with the angels, the other 2 puffers sat back in one corner. i was confused to i watched and then the 2 puffers quickly came from behind and beside and killed the puffer. there was no other aggression other than feeding. but this time they ignored the food and straight to the kills.

i rushed the work on preparing my 77gallon set up and got that running and moved in the angels. i left the 2 skirts in the tank with the angels.

all was fine till Friday 13th morning. i came out, turned on the light on my tank and found that there were hundreds of eggs layed in a tunnel i had built out of PVC pipe. the one puffer would not move an inch, not even to feed.

i soon went to my local fish store (riverfront aquariums) in Calgary and spoke to my trusted fish guy. he said that in his 45 years of aquarium history he has never heard of this. i was instructed to simply continue what i was doing for what i was doing must have been right.

so i returned home and found the eggs.... gone...

except a couple... in which were soon gone.. where... i dunno.... so as of now i continue my regiment. i clean on Sundays and water change on Wednesday. But i want to know if anyone knows how i can get them to lay again. Or if anyone has had success with breeding these puffers also.

[Rocker]

Can you tell us what type of puffers you have. Red eye is just a common name that could apply to many different species.

[Pufferpunk]

It is occasional that folks here have gotten their "red eye" puffers (T cutcutia, cochinchinensis, turgidus--check the Puffer List, to see which one you may have) to spawn. Keeping them from eating the eggs & raising the fry, are a different story. Pufferpack has bred the cutcutia. You could try doing a search for his posts.

[Tihsho]

I can't think of puffers laying more then 30 eggs. You sure your angels didn't spawn near the tube before you removed them?