The Puffer Forum

Im curious on your thoughts and comments on if anyone here has breed figure eight puffers and the process and can they be cross breed with other dwarf puffers?

They've never been documented to have bred in captivity. Crossbreeding between those puffers is highly improbable as they are each completely different species. They all belong in the same family, but lack the ability to reproduce with other species within that family. NTM you'd never have dwarfs and f8s in the same environment (natural or articifial.

Well, so few puffers have been captive bred at all that the idea of cross-breeding is pretty much a pipe dream. That said, even within the genus Tetraodon, there is quite enough doubt about the correctness of the nomenclature that we are are uncertain as to the "real" ID of many of these fish.

Only the dwarf puffer is easily bred, though a few other species have been hobbyist-bred. The F-8s are a well defined species on which we have a high degree of confidence, but I have not heard of any hobby-breeding or any commercial breeding of these fish. Currently puffers in general are wild-caught fish.

But don't let us discourage you. Several of these fish have been spawned in captivity, and with luck we will catch on eventually. There have been more successful matings than fry rearings to date. The fry tend to be quite small and therefore need tiny foods. Many species have planktonic larvae, which is quite challenging for hobbyists. But it has been done with Clownfish and some others, so there is hope for puffers.

Just want to contribute to what RTR said by saying that indeed it is quite possible to breed F8s in captivity. Simply because not many hobbyists successfully breed this species in captivity, does not mean that it is beyond the hobbyist.
A recent article by Doi et al. (2014), demonstrated successful breeding with a single pair of F8s in which about 1000 eggs were reported to have been laid, with a high post-hatch survival rate. You may think they only achieved success because they were scientists; however, they achieved this with a fairly minimal 120 L setup. To induce spawning they kept the fish at 30 ppt (1.023 sg) for one month and gradually lowered the salinity by 3-5 ppt per week for a period of about one month, until a level of 9 ppt (1.007 sg) was attained. I hope this may have encouraged you (or anyone else) to try reproduce these results, because if I weren't a poor student and had the money/resources I would definitely myself .

Here's the deal: A successful breeding of a fish includes rearing the fry to sexual maturity. Herein lies the problem. The fry just don't survive for very long.

Any ideas on what age approximately an F8 would begin laying eggs?

A sexually mature fish would be about 3" but there has never been a successful breeding of F8s in captivity.

How can you tell the difference between male and female figure eight puffers?

You can't.