The Puffer Forum

I was browsing the puffer pics as usual, comparing them. It appears that in the pictures that are posted for "T. Travancoricus" might not all be T. Travancoricus.

If you look some of the different photos you will see small differences.

#1-Some have small Irridescent/black patches on them, no little spots or spines.

#2-Some have black patches with little tiny dots (or spines.. not sure which it is without having the fish here in front of me) scattered about.

#3-Some have a few fuzzy patches and a line coming off the tail. These ones tend to be the ones with the wrinkles behind their eyes.

#4-Some have just one big black patch on each side and the rest of the body is covered in tiny specs. ( Like the ones Thatpetplace.com supposedly offers )

MY guess is this:

Either some of these are morphisms, and the fish are simply changing appearance faster than we can keep track of.

OR

Maybe they are possible ways to tell male from female ( aside from the brown line on the belly ).

OR

New species have come about... and someone should get on it...lol.

OR

One of them is not T. Travancoricus, but rather T. Imitator or another that I am unaware of.

If I had to guess... I'd have to say :

Description #3 & #4 - Either one could be T. Imitator.
Description #1 - True T. Travancoricus
Description #2 - Maybe female ? Really have no clue.

Your thoughts... ?

Oh yea and as a side note ( it could just be a weird one but... ), I noticed in the one picture of a puffer with the lines behind its eyes... its mouth us up-turned. All T. Travancoricus I have seen do not have an up-turned mouth. The fish with the up-turned mouth also appears to have red eyes... Anyways, tell me what y'all think.

-Umb

Nobody cares eh ? lol. Doh!

I went and looked, but I am definitely not an expert around here.

Jase wrote:I went and looked, but I am definitely not an expert around here.

Yea.. but, you are still free to state your opinion ;P
I'm not exactly an expert either, but on that note, I don't think anyone is an expert when it comes to Puffers. Hence lots of confusion. Every expert has to start somewhere eh ?

That is all I'm really asking for here, is just your thoughts on what I submitted. It doesn't have to be right or wrong. I was just posting my observations. So go ahead, tell me what YOU think. ( If you have interest in the little puffers, of course ) I'd love to hear what any of you have to say. We are here to 'discuss' right ? ;D

I agree they do not all look like the same species... but I'm not sure what all to look for in finding out what they are. but the one with the upturned mouth may just be an optical allusion.

It could just be different varieties of fish and also it could be they were caught in different locations.

flamesofifreet wrote:It could just be different varieties of fish and also it could be they were caught in different locations.

Yea, I'm kinda thinking that too. But this being The Puffer Forum and all, don't ya think we should get some info or something.. surely someone must know 'where' exactly it is each fish came from. Meh. Maybe I'm just looking at them too hard.

I think I would have to see some pictures =\

CtHM wrote:I think I would have to see some pictures =\

Since I want to know and you are at least looking , I'll make it easy for you to help.

#1 - http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/ug. ... 3.jpg.html

#2 - http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/ug. ... 3.jpg.html

#3 - http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/ug. ... 3.jpg.html

#4 - http://www.thatpetplace.com/images/pres ... P38510.jpg

Red Eye/Upturned Mouth ( Which may be an illusion, as pointed out by Jase ) - http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/ug. ... 2.jpg.html

-UMB

Dwarf puffers are one of the species we can definately tell male apart from female. There's a whole article about the differences in the library, take a few minutes to read it and you'll see that a lot of the spots vs stripes, yellow vs white, wrinkles, etc are all sexual differences. The photos in this article are all my own puffers.

Plus there are a few various color morphs and just "different" looking dwarf puffers out there.

Myaj wrote:Dwarf puffers are one of the species we can definately tell male apart from female. There's a whole article about the differences in the library, take a few minutes to read it and you'll see that a lot of the spots vs stripes, yellow vs white, wrinkles, etc are all sexual differences. The photos in this article are all my own puffers.

Plus there are a few various color morphs and just "different" looking dwarf puffers out there.

Thx. I just read it and yea...you wrote it lol good job! But might I ask why this type of info is only in the Library and not in the Pedia ? Ya need help updating ?! lol.

It should be in the Pedia, if nothing else, a link to the article should be there. I'll take a look at it.

This site has a ton of info and sometimes adding important links so a person can jump from area to area gets lost in the shuffle of just trying to get a certain thing done (like getting the info into all the fields for the pufferpedia). We created the pufferpedia before I wrote that article, and it probably never occured to use to add a link to the pedia entry. I'll make a note to also check other pedia entries that have species specific articles written about them. Good catch!