Was chit chattin in Chat with a fellow member, and we were pickin through an Online Fish Store... I wanted to peek at their puffers...
Lo-and-behold, http://www.petsolutions.com/Spotted-Puf ... 0+C79.aspx ... aren't GSP supposed to have white bellies? I'm afraid of what they would send, if this is the best specimen they can take a pic of... He looks sickly to me... If I'm misinformed, but I'm not sure this is very becoming? They also try saying it's a Freshwater fish, and kind of 'mention' brackish water in the future...
Happiness comes through doors you didn't even know you left open.
his colors dont make him look happy, but he looks nice and plump like he would be healthy. i have read somewhere, cant find the link or i would put it in here, that predators that have white bellies will sometimes turn them dark so they cant be seen from above by prey since if your at certain depths and you look up to the surface its darker. in the wild puffers feed mostly on crustaceans which are for the most part found on the bottom of a body of water. so i think that hes just kind of displaying his "hunting colors" as i have heard them called before. i constantly see my GSP displaying different coloring at certain times. when he emerges from sleeping on the substrate, or when i see him sleeping, hes always dark. you can barely see his spots and they all look camo'd together. seconds later he will be brightly colored with a full white belly swimming around. if he knows im getting ready to feed him his belly will get dark, spots stay the same, and while the food is defrosting he will search around the tank looking at all the empty shells for hermits to move into, he will dig around in the sand a little looking for my nassarius snails
I dont' think that's the case in this one, as puffers in "hunting colors" generally dull down their bright green patch too. In addition his fins don't look very healthy, and I would venture a guess that if that was a side shot, the belly wouldn't look "plump", it just looks that way because of the angle (tail tilted down so you can see more belly).
But every puffer has its own coloring and style, some stay darker (usually those turn out to be Sab's though,not gsp), some have white bellies all the time. If I was picking out a single specimin from a bunch though, black bellies like that are what I'd avoid.
yeah definitely try to avoid any with dark bellies. i would say my circumstances are a little different as they are more controlled circumstances. when you have a bunch in a tank and some have dark bellies most likely they were stressed. your right the fins do look a little chewed up. also meant to mention in my other post that when i do work on the tank and the puffer gets his "stressed" colors, that also seems a little different than the hunting and sleeping colors. see at the bottom with the pricing? it says "Spotted Puffer M" and "Spotted Puffer XL" but both seem to have a 1-2 range and a 3+ range which im assuming is the inches for that price. wierd they have the inches in both categories both with prices...
