I've got a pair of these puffers, I've had them probably 7 months or so. They seem to get on fine together, but sometimes the larger one chases the other around, but I have found that moving things around in their tank gives them something else to think about for a while and they forget about chasing each other!
I have also been trying to find information on them on the net and can't find much. I have to ask, you have a male and female, how do you tell the difference between the two? I think my pair are male and female as they have slightly different colours on them, but I would love to know for sure
Hi Mini30Girl,
I've been wanting these for a while now, and finally got them. So far, mine seem fine together.
Okay, the male has a "straight" line down the side dividing his colours from his white belly, whereas the female has a sort of "broken" brown line down her side before her belly. I hope I explained that well enough. Can you see the difference in yours like that? My female is bigger than my male and seems a little bossy as well. But so far, no aggression and that's all I can ask for. I've made sure to put a secure top on the tank now though since she jumped out when I first brought them home, and she's tried to jump when I was cleaning the tank too.
Thanks! I think I can see that in mine:) The bigger one of the two has a more solid line along his side than the smaller one, who has the broken line. Also the one I think is a male gets a yellow patch across his head when I feed them (when their colours get brighter generally.) but the smaller puffer does not have this at all. Do yours get this as well? Iv been trying to get some photos of them but they are quite camera shy!
I've only had mine since Thursday and they seem to be fairly shy too. I haven't really got a good look at them because they go to the back of the tank when I try to look closely at them. But I will try to observe them closer when they are eating.
I'm hoping that they will settle down after I've had them a while. So I won't expect to see too much of them for a few more days. They hide behind the plastic plant that I put into the tank.
Do you have yours in brackish water? And if you don't, do you plan on keeping them in brackish water? I have read that they are brackish, but can tolerate hard fresh water.
Yeah, mine were pretty shy for the first week but they are brilliant characters now! I love watching them
I keep mine in low end brackish, Im not sure exactly what salinity it is though, but its low. When I bought them they were basically in fresh so I slowly increased the salinity and they seem to be doing fine. As the salinity increased their colours got brighter and they opened their tail fins more (but that could have just been they were settling into their new tank!)
Im planning on keeping them at this low brackish level as they seem pretty happy. That is unless I find any more info on them:)
No, I totally agree with them being in low-end brackish. I plan on keeping mine that way too, but need to change over slowly so I don't kill my filter.
As to salinity, I never measure the salinity of any of my brackish tanks because brackish water isn't meant to be exact like marine water is. When I first started keeping my Mudskippers, which were the first brackish fish I had, the man I got them from gave me some good advice. He said never be exact when adding your salt for brackish water because in the wild a brackish fish might be in water that is more fresh one day and then be in water that is saltier another time, that's the nature of the brackish areas. So sometimes I add a little less and sometimes I add a little more. I bought a coffee measure spoon that is exactly 2 tablespoons, and this is what I use to measure my salt with ... so sometimes it's not quite as full and other times it's a fat heaping spoonful. Seems to work so far. I use this method for both my large mudskippers and my dwarf mudskippers and my brackish puffers as well.
I look forward to my Red-Lines colouring up once they are in brackish water, and hopefully they will get a little bolder also, so I can get some good pictures of them!
Cool! Thanks for the advice, I had never thought about it like that before but that makes perfect sense! These two are my first puffers and my first brackish tank so its nice to have some insight into how to make their tank as natural as I can.
When you get some nice photos please post them up, I would love to see some other red lines As for me, I need to invest in a better camera!
I'm not so good with taking photos either, but I will attempt to get some decent ones to post. I am going to work on taking some photos of all my new puffers tomorrow. So hopefully some time this week I should be able to post some photos.
