The Puffer Forum

Hi there. As you can probably tell by the topic, I'm new to owning a puffer (new to owning a fish tank in general, actually), and I had a few questions I had been thinking over. I apologize if many of these have been answered previously, I tried to scrounge up as much information as I could before making my own post.

First, I *believe* the the puffer I bought is a green spotted puffer. I'm sorry I can't post a picture right now, he's relatively shy at the moment and appears petrified of me trying to take a snap shot of him. He has the leopard spots and the small green antennae on his forehead, and I didn't see any other that looked quite like it. I have a completely freshwater tank, but the person at the pet store said the fish had been completely acclimated to live in freshwater. Is it posible for the fish to thrive in a freshwater community as it might have in brackish water, or does this acclimation make the fish uncomfortable?

Second... after reading about it a bit, it seems my 10 gallon tank is going to be too small for this fish, especially later in its life. As of right now it is about 2 inches long, and it sounds like he might triple that size from the expected size on this site. How long will he be able to stay in a tank this size, or is it already cruel to be keeping him in there?

Third, concerning the fish's diet- I read the article on what to feed puffers, which I found inside of the GSP description. A couple questions concerning this. Will the puffer eat the tropical flakes at all, or is it absolutely necessary that I feed him one of the listed things on that website at all times? If I do always need to feed him these sort of things, is there anywhere that sells something like feeder snails, at a cheaper price than the ones in tanks? Most of the ones at places like petco were around $1.50 a pop, which seems like a steep price for anything that i would be feeding him too frequently. (As a note, I did purchase some of the freeze dried blodworms, so he won't starve in the meantime, I just wanted to make sure of this for the long run).

Last (hopefully), I was wondering if the fact that he seems to be going to the corner of the tank, with his beak sometimes touching the container, going up and down for short periods of time is a bad sign. I plan on going to the store very soon to get some more testing kits for different aspects of the tank, but I wanted to know if this was a telltale sign of something specific being wrong.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, and thank you in advance for any help!

Welcome to the site!

First, visit our Pufferpedia and try to make sure you know which species you have. Most likely it is a green spotted puffer (GSP) as that is the most common puff found in stores.

At 2 inches, the sooner you can get it into a 30 gallon or larger tank the better. It should also be in rising salinity levels at that size. Freshwater will shorten its lifespan quite a bit, and leave it susceptable to diseases. A fish that should live 10+ years will likely only live a year or two, which is pretty sad.

Keeping it in a community tank is a bad idea, as the puffer will very likely kill every other fish. And of course, there's the salinity issue.

For food, most puffers will not eat flake food. This species is not bred in captivity, and every GSP you see in a store has been wild caught and shipped here. Therefore, they only know how to catch and eat live foods, and usually have to be trained (or get hungry enough) to eat "dead" foods. You'll have better luck with things like frozen (thawed) bloodworms and mysis shrimp, and they are more healthy than anything freeze dried. You can also buy a small package of frozen, shell on shrimp at the grocery store and thaw one out. Let him chew on it a little bit, then take it away when he's full (can put it in a ziploc bag in the fridge and use it again the next day, mmm, leftovers!) Ask around stores if you can get some of their "pest" snails such as pond or ramshorn, usually the ones they charge for are apple or mystery snails. Or you can order online from Wilma, I don't have her website handy at the moment but I'm sure its out there if you search the site for "wilma, snails".

Pacing the walls of the tank is normal behavior for a stressed, nervous puffer.. but it can also be normal for a normal puffer. The more decorations you can give him to hide in, explore and help him feel more comfortable, the less he should pace.

Get those test kits as soon as you can (get ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, the rest are nice to have but not necessary) and make sure you are doing water changes often for him, puffers are pretty sensitive and need clean clean water.

Looks like I might have to take this guy back to the pet store = \.

I'm living in a pretty small college dorm right now, so even if I had the money I doubt I'd be able to fit a 30 gallon tank in here very easily, nevermind a 30 gallon and the 10 gallon. Thanks for your help, its going to be tough giving this guy back, he's easily the coolest fish in my tank!

As for an alternative, would I be alright keeping a dwarf puffer in this tank? (also, would the same salinity issues occur or will they be perfectly alright as freshwater fish?)

Dwarf puffers are freshwater so no issues there going brackish. Stick to 1 per 3-5 gallons. Some dwarfs can be quite vicious little critters, all depends on the individuals. What else is in the tank?

You'll have to forgive me for my lack of fish knowledge, so my names might be a little off...

I have one flame dwarf guorami, a tiny algae eater which starts with an O, and a tetra that looks somewhat like a smaller version of a silver dollar. Somebody (I'm guessing the GSP) took a little bite out of the algae eater already.

I wouldn't add a dwarf puffer to that tank, they can be nippy little buggars and the gourami and oto will probably be picked on.

Puffers are too cute for their own good.

No kidding = (.

Guess I might just have to wait a while to get a puffer then.