The Puffer Forum

are the orangeys hard to find?

Maybe he just wants to look like the rock that he was sitting by.

Bcgirl304 wrote:are the orangeys hard to find?

I think the orange ones are fairly common, along with the tan/brownish ones. Obviously there are varying degrees of orange colour, but I think they are quite pretty. Some even have a pink look to them.

With the bright red congo's how much color variation are they able to change. I really love the tanish ones. I know it is the only one I've ever had, but she is able to make such drastic changes to her coloration it is amazing. Most of the time now I'd call her an "orangish" and I think LilSwimz$ is right, the rocks and other decoration help shift her to one color or another. Congo's also have to be some of the easiest fish to take care of. Only need fed once ever 2-3 days, and when they are full grown can go as much as a week without food easily.

Bcgirl304- In looking for our Congo I found out they are an extremely seasonal fish. Pretty much every shop I talked to who knew anything told me they come in the Spring time (March and April mainly it seems). I was also told the red ones are generally found more at the early portion of the season for them. If you are fine with a fish that doesn't move 90% of the time these are great. We stop whatever we are doing if we see ours out to just sit and watch her swim, it is that infrequent.

My "mini" one, Biscuit, is rarely every out, and we actually play a game called "Find the Biscuit" because he's that good at hiding. On the other hand, due to Orangetta's very orange colouring, she's fairly easy to find and also the fact that's she's full grown helps too. But Orangetta tends to swim a lot more and just sit on the substrate waiting for her food. Biscuit rarely eats more than the guppies that I put in there, although from time to time he will take other food.

I would have to say that you've been lucky Hierony, because some Congo puffers can be very difficult to get eating (Orangetta nearly starved before she started eating). In my opinion, I consider Congo puffers to be one of the harder puffers to keep, but only because of their resistance to dead foods and lack of interest in most food offered.

But I love them, one of my favourite puffers!

We must have been quite lucky. I'm pretty sure the LFS we picked her up from had been housing her for nearly a month, so maybe they did most of the hard part for me, or maybe my Peaches was so tired of them trying to force her to eat blood worms she just jumped at the opportunity for silversides and jumbo shrimp.

I really need to follow up on these fish and get a tank set up for one I really love the look to them. And when they bury in the sand those eyes balls crack me up

The mouth makes me laugh, they look like they are always pursing their lips at me (okay, so I know fish don't have lips). And it's cool when they eat too, they sort of vacuum it in.