The Puffer Forum

Here are a couple of emails I got at WetWebMedia:
A couple of days ago I spoke with a young woman who works at the local pet store (national chain). I told her I had a Green Spotted Puffer and she told me she had one as well. We both have a GSP tank as well as a dwarf puffer tank. She was apparently as excited as I was to impart information she'd learned from speaking with others or reading info on the
internet. Through the course of our conversation, she insisted that she could VISUALLY tell the difference between male and female Green Spoted Puffers. I found this very hard to believe considering that I've found NO information on the net supporting this claim. What I've read here at WWW, as well as at other sites, insists quite differently....that there is no sexual dimorphism in GSP.
Here is her criteria for visually determining the difference between males and females:
1) Male GSP's have wrinkles behind their eyes as they get a little "older." The wrinkles are hard to see, but she swears they are there.
2) Male GSP's have a VERY faint line that runs the length of the center *underneath* side of the of the fish. Basically, there is a faint line running the length of the belly. She said
you have to get down low underneath the fish and look up and look really closely because it's very faint.
When she said this, I was sure she was mistakenly informing me of the dimorphism in DWARF puffers, since we did speak about them during the course of our conversation. When I asked her if she was SURE this was true for GSP's she said, "Oh, yes! I know it's true because that is how I chose my male and female to breed."
I asked her HOW she came by this information and she said there is a fish *specialist* who visits the store and he is the one who gave her these tips. He said you could sex ANY puffer this way.
Knowing what I've read (that it's very difficult to impossible to rear GSP fry), I asked her if they bred and she said they did and that she raised the fry (the store she works for does NOT sell GSP's...so I assumed she wasn't getting a
kickback of any kind). I asked her what happened to the fry and she told me she gave them to friends. She said she fed the fry finely crushed flakes (and something else, I can't remember right now).
I told her about your site with hopes she would post her experiences.
Have you ever heard of anything like this? Does it sound likely to you? I'd love to know your take on all of this. I'm thinking of returning to the store to ask her more questions (although I'm not interested in breeding GSP's at this point) and try to get her to give me more information about this specialist and hopefully she will have contact information (or at a least a name) for him.
Looking forward to your response,
Corinthian


<I guarantee you, without a single doubt in my mind, she is breeding dwarf puffers>

That is exactly what I thought, too. Being the skeptic that I am (after reading everything you've posted on GSP's, as well as any information I could get my hands on elsewhere), the idea was incredulous to me. I've also read everything I could find on dwarves. I have both dwarf puffers and a Green Spotted Puffer. I'm able to sex the dwarves. As I previously stated, I made sure that she knew we were NOT talking about dwarves....and she was VERY adamant that there is faint dimorphism in GSP's. Her exact words were, "The wrinkles and lines are very faint, but if you look closely enough, they are there." I asked her how big the GSP's needed to before the dimorphism showed...and she pointed to a zero on a store flyer that was considerably larger than any dwarf puffer (it looked to me to the be size of an adult GSP).

When I told her I was looking to buy earthworms, she asked me what they were for. I told her that I wanted to feed them to my Green Spotted Puffer. She spouted a list of appropriate foods for GSP's. She made sure I knew that GSP's needed to be in, at the very least, brackish water made with marine salt (mine is full marine now) . She knew what she was talking about in every other aspect of GSP's. I love a good debate and I will debate until the cows come home....but I'm not simply trying to debate this. I really want to discern fact from fiction. The girl said she chose her GSP's based on this dimorphism and that she bred them and produced fry, which she eventually gave away. She also said that the male breeder eventually killed the female breeder.
I'll pay another visit to the store (which does carry dwarf puffers, btw) and hopefully she will be there. I want to see if I can get any kind of contact information for the fish "specialist" who gave her this information.

I will keep you updated.

I'd have answered exactly the same as you did, PP.

Wrinkles and line on the belly are clearly dwarf puffer signs, and dwarf puffers have been bred in brackish water.

All male Carinotetraodon do have this line due to a crest in their belly, GSP don't have that (everyone knows that, who has seen them puffed), so they do not have this line.

They can only certainly be sexed when the females carry eggs, and even that is difficult, cause the males are roundish, too. Other dimorphism in body shape (males being more angular) still is only theory. Breeding reports are rare and not properly published (btw. I think they were all German and not properly documented).

Really seems like someone claiming to have done personally something something they KNOW had actually done, and they messed up there puffers when recounting it.

hm. Maybe it's just someone looking for the attention? Or maybe she did breed them and the puffers just happened to be a male and a female. I'd love to hear more.

isn't the line on the DP due to the keel and the way they puff, thus not the same as the GSP puff technique?

I would love to hear more adn feel its a littel too convenient that there are no traceable offspring and that whe would give them away and not selll them on in the store

The simple comment that "you can sex any puffer this way" proves it to be a load of bull.

Sorry, but unless every non-dwarf/red eye puffer out there is a female and thus just *happens* to be lacking the eye wrinkles and belly stripe, other puffer species do not have those traits.


Sounds to me like she was going off on a subject she's interested in, made a mistake, then tried to cover it up so you wouldn't think she doesn't know anything about the subject. Which she obviously does know something about.. but there's just no way people are sexing and breeding GSP's based on eye wrinkles and belly stripes.