The Puffer Forum

Thank you for all the comments!

crazedpuffer wrote:How long have you had him?

2 months only. Still watching him in a bare bottom tank, but will add substrate very soon, since no signs of disease did occur.

Troender wrote:WOW! Is everyone in here buying very beautful puffers these days? Yes, that was another very beautiful one! How big is he now, and how big will he get?

About 5 cm (2 inch). The adults get about 10 cm (4 inch). Fishbase says 12 cm (4.7 inch).

DRRT wrote:...
central and southern western atlantic, does that include the caribbean?

Yes, but only the most Southern part of it.

Mareva wrote:...More info about it?

Pretty much like other Tobies/Canthigasters. This one hates cameras. Eats everything. I mostly feed mussel and small shrimps with vitamins, but it also eats flakes, Mysis, Artemia, Nori algae. It has not touched small snails I had in the tank. Have not tried corals, yet. Mostly nice to other fish.

pufferfreak wrote:Cool puffer!! Aren't there around 40 toby species corvus? Oh and i was looking on wetwebmedia and theres a toby that gets to be 2 inches!!! Its called a pygmy toby.

More than 50 species are described, but only about 30 (30-35) are recognized as "real" species, the other ones are seen as synonyms. Canthigaster pygmaea probably. Fishbase says 5.6 cm (=2.2. inch). It occurs in the Red Sea. I guess it would be hard to import this one.

As you may have seen on the first picture I had more (3) of them in the beginning.

One did not get along with the other two and I sold it along with some Centropyge he was doing fine with.
The other two behaved like a pair and sometimes even kind of danced with the one in the second picture displaying his keel and becoming really bright colored. I assume it may be the male. The other one was larger (6.5 cm), but had to move when the smaller one wanted to, except feeding time.

Sadly, the possible female was found dead one evening, it was alive in the morning. I could not find any symptoms of a disease internally or externally. It had a possible bite mark which in size could theoretically match a small porcupine puffer sharing the 60 gallon quarantine, but this had not pierced the skin at all. In addition I have not seen any aggression between he small (size of the tobies if at all) diodontid and the Tobies. Therefore I prolonged the quarantine time, sadly there will be no breeding attempt.

Pufferpunk wrote:Marco, I deleted the 2nd thread on this.

Thanks. I did not recognize I had possibly created two threads.

Any possibility about seeing them in the US anytime soon?

yunachin wrote:Any possibility about seeing them in the US anytime soon?

Sure. You could ask someone importing from Brazil. Importers that have Muraena pavonina aka Brazilian dragon moray may also have this species on their stocklist, at least that is what I observed.

I will give it a try. Thank you. He is too gorgeous of a fish to pass up.

Possibly the bite caused internal damage?

I visit the Carribbean regularly (about 3X/year) primarily to St. Croix and other islands - St. Croix is pretty far south but not quite as far as this one apparently goes. I can't say I have ever seen one there - although of course its a very big area I am going to keep a special lookout for this one though...

It's replaced by Canthigaster rostrata in most of the Carribean looking pretty similar on first glance. Have you seen this one?

wow that is a stunner Corvus congrats

LFS on saturday (UK) had something similar to these...

definitely a toby, it was brown on the top, an white underneath... with a distinct split between the two

I'd not seen one before, think they called it a white bellied puffer... helpful...!


Didn't see the coloured lines though....


maybe it was the same as yours...

tempted, but didn't get it.

beautiful puffer though.

Corvus - I have never seen any small tobies in the Caribbean - I've seen a multitude of Diodon Holocanthus throughout - oddly enough they are usually quite large - upwards of 2.5' to 3'. The smallest was about 12 inches. I have seen a few different species of trunkfish - the most beautiful is below (this picture is courtesy of http://www.flickr.com - but the two different ones I have seen looked exactly like this one only much much large (about 18" or so)...just thought I'd share the picture since its a good one...