The Puffer Forum

DANG!!! busted!! haha


I still have 4" turning radius

I believe in Canada that the landlord has absolutely no say about what pets you can and can't keep.

I don't think so Flutter. At least, not here. We had trouble finding a place a few years ago because we have a dog, and my nan's old apartment complex wouldn't allow pets AFAIK.

Flutter wrote:I believe in Canada that the landlord has absolutely no say about what pets you can and can't keep.

yea... communal buildings ... allergies, pests, health issues.. and the landlord is the owner .. he/she can dictate what comes into the apartment and has a lot of laws backing him / her up.

Maybe it changed recently or is regional. I know that landlords here have no say over any of that.

My place knows I have a 55G they dont know about the cat or the 115 yet

so in Canada you can keep a pet horse or chickens in an apartment, and the landlord has no say in it?

Yes, it's a 75g, although I've seen adult burrfish & I'm sure they'd be happier in a bigger tank.

Animals like chickens and horses are regulated by city or town bylaws, landlords and tenants have no say. Cats dogs fish and others are different. Landlords can say that they do not allow pets and put on whatever restrictions they want. They do not however have any legal backing to do so. If you landlord discovers you have a cat they can not evict you for it. If they are getting complaints about smell or noise or 75gallons of water coming through the ceiling into the apartment below, they can take action on that. That being said honesty is always best. I think most landlord would have little idea how big a 75 is or how much it weighs. Some may ask you to get insurance, which is probably a good idea. When I approached my insurance company and told them I had 17 tanks a total of about 600g worth they didn't even raise my premiums. In Canada the landlord tenant laws vary provincially and it always a good idea to know them 1000g tank or not.

Being an old fogy, I really believe that generally good and well-intentioned hobbyist's primary flaw is underhousing their fish. To me, a 10", especially heavy-bodied and strong, fish in a 75 is a strong no-no. I can no longer do that sort of thing myself. I have done in the past, certainly. But never again,NIMFT. I have been fortunate in having a rather large selection of tanks, and have seen the radical difference between such fish in a 75 and a 120, or better, 180, and I just cannot revert. I have reached the point where if i cannot do it right, I will not do it at all. This is pure personal opinion, obviously YMMV.

Since Filbert (at 10 years old) is only very close to 12", it is my opinion that he is stunted in the 125g he lives in.

I understand what you are saying and I feel the same way but when I go down that road I start thinking we shouldn't be keeping them at all. We can never really provide truly adequate conditions.

In hopes of doing better let's say we doubled our minimum tank requirements, that would effectively drive me out of the hobby because I currently don't have the space for more than a 40g.

BiffMalawi wrote:I understand what you are saying and I feel the same way but when I go down that road I start thinking we shouldn't be keeping them at all. We can never really provide truly adequate conditions.

In hopes of doing better let's say we doubled our minimum tank requirements, that would effectively drive me out of the hobby because I currently don't have the space for more than a 40g.

im sure pretty much all of us agree that its not right to be keeping fish at all and very true that we cant fully provide perfect conditions to their habitat in nature. but somehow the fish keeping industry started and theres now always going to be an industry for it and honestly if every one of us didnt get the puffers we chose, more than likely the puffer that we personally own would be dead in someone elses control or maybe not even made it out of the pet store. we do good, try to inform people and do what we can in order to provide a nice healthy lifestyle for our little buddies and thats pretty much all we can do. if someone stops buying fish because they dont agree with the reasoning and they dont think they should be anywhere but in the wild, then the next person coming into a store might buy that fish which still keeps a market around for fish

Of course you are right hence the reason most of the puffs I have owned have come from people who didn't want them or couldn't keep them anymore. I could never not keep fish there would just be something missing

I for one strongly disagree on the idea that we should not be keeping captive fish as pets at all. Keeping wet pets is the main chance for survival of some of these fish already, and the numbers of those will only increase. Good luck on finding White Clouds on White Cloud Mountain anymore - their habitat is gone. There are a multitude of others in similar situations. If we do not find ways of keeping them alive through multiple generations to indefinitely, they will be gone forever. We can and do learn a lot by keeping fish. We can only breed a few puffers to date, but that number has changed a lot in recent years and will increase with increasing knowledge. You have to realize that captives should live far longer than those in the wild. We already have that info on basic care for most familiar puffers. Once we can keep them well and healthy through high multiples of their wild lifespan, at and above their wild size, we can do more to learn to breed them successfully and rear the offspring. We already have much of the care information, plus a fair bit on breeding some types. Broadening that info and developing workable rearing strategies will come with time.

Doubling the minimum requirement for tank size is not that big a deal - really it isn't. Certainly not everyone will be able to do that for the larger puffers from space and weight restrictions and disposable income limitations.. But that only means that fewer will be able with the big puffers. There are a lot of small and medium puffers where almost anyone can do effectively anything with no more space and time and money than many of the hobbyists on-line already devote to the hobby.

I do suspect that the larger puffers really need significantly better than a simple doubling of existing suggested minimums. And that very likely is the case for other fish families equally.

But if the hobbyists do not develop the skills to handle these fish through breeding and rearing in captivity, many of the species will disappear. Extinction is forever. We are screwing up the world's ecology, and we don't even understand it yet. We have no way of even knowing what we are losing.