The Puffer Forum

In captivity, stress is the all too common ultimate cause of death or at least seriously shortened lifespan.

Just think of all the hobbyists (and LFS) who think that Neon Tetras are short-lived fish. Or Cory cats. Or puffers.

I'm against it too. Puffers can be very aggressive. We initially had our irrubescos in a mixed tank and they harassed the other fish so bad (all the other fish were larger) that we had to remove them 4 days after introduction. And these are reportedly some of the nicer ones

Size really doesn't matter. Often times predators are smaller than their prey.

As an aside, RTR, I had mentioned on another forum that neons should live 10 years. Two people commented, one found it very interesting and the other thought it was pure BS. My beliefs and practices fit in much better at this forum than theirs. I do not fit into the beliefs and practices over there. I love the responsibility and long term views that are promoted here. Love it.

Although my fahaka allows many tank mates, there have been times that he has turned on them. For example, this EBJD grew up with the puffer from a 1" juvie & one day the puffer decided he didn't like him anymore. I can home to find the JD's fins shredded. Although none of his "meaty parts" or vital organs had been bitten, he died from the stress of the attack, a few days later.

Pufferpunk wrote:Although my fahaka allows many tank mates, there have been times that he has turned on them. For example, this EBJD grew up with the puffer from a 1" juvie & one day the puffer decided he didn't like him anymore. I can home to find the JD's fins shredded. Although none of his "meaty parts" or vital organs had been bitten, he died from the stress of the attack, a few days later.

Oh it's true...

I had my Fahaka (10 month old guy) in a 75 (while the 150 was setting up) with a pair of clown loaches... I came home from work one day to find a nice bite into one of their faces. It's funny cause they used to swim around together... Needless to say the Fahaka is alone in the 150.

My T.mbu lived several years with a prize pajama cat ($$$ fish), they grew up together. One day after work I went into the tank room and the mbu was very fat. A quick scan of the tank an the cat's pectoral girdle - with those nasty pectoral spines was intact. The head and body of the 8" cat were gone into the mbu's gut.

Flutter; Check out the entry in the Baensch Aquarium Atlas, Vol. 1. that was my first hint of that, many years ago when that volume first came out in English. I had to try it. two 33XLs, one w/ Neons in my moderately hard alkaline water, the other with the same fish duplicted in reconstituted RO with low GH and low-to-moderate KH. The group in my tap lasted over 8 years average, the reduced TDS/GH/KH averaged right at ten years. The only tanks mates were Otos. In mixed tanks, smaller groups never averaged as much as 5 years old. Those findings alone were the final blow against mixed tanks for me. Since that time i have found out how long captive fish should live - if they are not stressed by living in a mixing pot of aliens. It is not just small Tetras and other smallish schoolers. It seems to apply equally across the board to all fish. You could say that my philosophy of fish-keeping is based of that Atlas entry plus Lorenz' "King Solomon's Ring" (especially the description of his Cichlid-breeding set-ups). The technical side has had other influences, but the over-riding basis is from those works and my testing of them for myself. Those are decidedly non-trivial findings to me - to put it mildly. They color everything that I do in this hobby.

RTR wrote:My T.mbu lived several years with a prize pajama cat ($$$ fish), they grew up together. One day after work I went into the tank room and the mbu was very fat. A quick scan of the tank an the cat's pectoral girdle - with those nasty pectoral spines was intact. The head and body of the 8" cat were gone into the mbu's gut.

Flutter; Check out the entry in the Baensch Aquarium Atlas, Vol. 1. that was my first hint of that, many years ago when that volume first came out in English. I had to try it. two 33XLs, one w/ Neons in my moderately hard alkaline water, the other with the same fish duplicted in reconstituted RO with low GH and low-to-moderate KH. The group in my tap lasted over 8 years average, the reduced TDS/GH/KH averaged right at ten years. The only tanks mates were Otos. In mixed tanks, smaller groups never averaged as much as 5 years old. Those findings alone were the final blow against mixed tanks for me. Since that time i have found out how long captive fish should live - if they are not stressed by living in a mixing pot of aliens. It is not just small Tetras and other smallish schoolers. It seems to apply equally across the board to all fish. You could say that my philosophy of fish-keeping is based of that Atlas entry plus Lorenz' "King Solomon's Ring" (especially the description of his Cichlid-breeding set-ups). The technical side has had other influences, but the over-riding basis is from those works and my testing of them for myself. Those are decidedly non-trivial findings to me - to put it mildly. They color everything that I do in this hobby.

so RTR if you have 10 neons in two tanks, one tank with only them and the other tank with a few cories or something not aggressive what so ever, the 10 alone would live longer than the 10 with cories? do they outlive as a species only tank even without tankmates that might not stress them?