The Puffer Forum

wow a 90G could easily hold 15-20 DP's. Id go with 15 and a school of 8 ottos

xrayjeeper83 wrote:wow a 90G could easily hold 15-20 DP's. Id go with 15 and a school of 8 ottos

Thats what i was thinking, i am just worried about that many being okay together, i guess as long as i have lots od hiding places they should be good?

Don

I wouldn't go quite that many just in case you ended up with an overabundance of males. Ten would still be quite entertaining.

Id get like 3-4 males and 6-8 females.

the prob is i dont get to pick them out, and where i am getting them from they have no idea on how to sex them?

but yes 10 with 10 ottos would be very cool to see

Don

You could get a few less DP's and/or replace the ottos with kuhli loaches. Kuhli loaches are awesome.

Flutter wrote:You could get a few less DP's and/or replace the ottos with kuhli loaches. Kuhli loaches are awesome.

I love those Loaches, and i have always thought of getting some The only prob i have is i need to order all the fish at the same time, and the ottos, amd loaches need an established tank

Don

Very few puffers are good candidates for mixed fish tanks. DPs are nippy critters, and the size of the other fish is immaterial. They are also among the world's slowest and pickiest eaters =- they are constitutionally unable to compete with most aquarium fish. They can starve amidst plenty, because most hobby fish strike and eat very fast, while DPs insist on minutely examining each morsel - that gives the competition a chance to see and strike and consume long before the DPs decide it is food and acceptable.

That is two solid strikes against them as mixed tank fish. They can co-exist well with a few particular fish, Otocinclus catfish in particular, with which they do not compete for food, nor do they nip them. But they are not by any stretch of the imagination a "community" fish. Please don't subject them to that.

RTR wrote:Very few puffers are good candidates for mixed fish tanks. DPs are nippy critters, and the size of the other fish is immaterial. They are also among the world's slowest and pickiest eaters =- they are constitutionally unable to compete with most aquarium fish. They can starve amidst plenty, because most hobby fish strike and eat very fast, while DPs insist on minutely examining each morsel - that gives the competition a chance to see and strike and consume long before the DPs decide it is food and acceptable.

That is two solid strikes against them as mixed tank fish. They can co-exist well with a few particular fish, Otocinclus catfish in particular, with which they do not compete for food, nor do they nip them. But they are not by any stretch of the imagination a "community" fish. Please don't subject them to that.

makes ya wonder thou, how do they survive in the wild?, do they ignore their river mates, that has always been a ???? i have asked myself?

Don

Well, they aren't crammed in a relatively small aquarium so each fish has like 1000x more space all to itself. They have enough room to retreat, hide, and stumble upon food before the other fish.

JRC3 wrote:Well, they aren't crammed in a relatively small aquarium so each fish has like 1000x more space all to itself. They have enough room to retreat, hide, and stumble upon food before the other fish.

Yeah i can understand that i guess, but i have seen wild footage of MBU's swimming in groups, if their so aggrasive, why would they do that?

Don

There is always safety in numbers, even for predators - quite a few sharks are schooling also.

Very few hobbyists have any valid sense of the micro-habitats that many hobby fish populate, but those do make survival possible. Consider the diverse Rift Lake habitats - they are limited in scope or scale and thus directly responsible for the extreme speciation and huge numbers of selected variants of certain species in those lakes. Rivers offer non-trivial varieties of microhabiats.

and thus, we live in congested cities... but this digresses from the topic

But those congested cities have a comparable range on microhabitatats, excuse me, communities or neighborhoods. So, it is not so off-topic.

well.... ... ...

I will see what happens, i need to get it up and running and cycled first, then i can think about what i want to put in it, but at this moment it is either a mess of DPS and some ottos, or a Comm tank

Thanks for all the opinions

Don