The Puffer Forum

Hi there
Im new to the forum so be gentle please
Iv recently purchased a tank (fluval duo 600) which has been fully cycled etc and am thinking of buying a puffer fish, iv spoken to a few people and they said a red tailed red eyed puffer would be fine in a community tank given sufficient cover and caves etc.
I just thought i would ask peoples opinions on here before i made any rash decisions... i would of course not buy any slow swimming fish with trailing fins.
Cheers

The bad news: puffers don't do well in community tanks. Generally puffers are very aggressive, and can kill the others in the tank. If they don't kill them, they can pester the others very badly, nipping fins and so on. You want to keep a puffer in a species only tank.
Here you can read about c. irrubesco, the puffer you are thinking about.

The good news: you decided to check it out before buying one. That's good fish keeping.

All puffers are serious fin-nippers. Red eyes can be bad & I wouldn't consider them community fish. The only puffer I would ever consider to add to a community of fish woud be the South Americans & they need dental work several times/year. I have one in my discus tank & would like a few more.

Pufferpunk wrote:All puffers are serious fin-nippers. Red eyes can be bad & I wouldn't consider them community fish. The only puffer I would ever consider to add to a community of fish woud be the South Americans & they need dental work several times/year. I have one in my discus tank & would like a few more.

I concur.

Pufferpunk wrote:All puffers are serious fin-nippers.

Although there are some individual puffers that are nice. SOME puffers will not nip fins, but it's always a coin flip with puffers. Some are nasty, some are nice. I do agree with PP, though. "Community Puffers" is a paradox.