The Puffer Forum

Hi Guys,

I been after one of these for a while now and had zero luck, until now!

I was in a local fish shop thats recently changed owners and they get in really unusual stuff as owners don't really know a tetra from their elbow, but it means you can find some real bargain oddballs.

Anyway they had a tank of Figure of Eight puffers going for £4 each and in the tank hiding on the floor was this guy.
When he was in the shop he was in "so called" brackish water which turned out to be tonic salt and he was almost jet black, over the course of 3 days I moved him into my low end marine/brakish tank 1.012 and he has turned this fab colour, he swims around investigating all the time and looks quite happy.

Do you all agree with me that he is a Ceylon? Do you think the colour change is a positive thing?

Yeah, I'd definitely call him a Ceylon. Yes, he looks like he's a healthy colour! Much better than jet black! I'm glad you found him before things went sour on his part!

Thank you I def don't think he is a F8.

He been investigating and chewing every shell in the tank, I tried to get him to eat a little blood worm but he ignores it, but then it is a little small for him.

What do you think will be the best thing to feed him, he's about 3 inches at the moment when he is not cruzing in and out the live rock or blowing at the sand he spends a lot of time in the top corner or the tank staring up at the surface it looks like he is begging for food?

Check out our feeding articles in the Library here. Great find! That's just how I found mine too.

His hunting techniques make it sound like he grew up entirely in his wild environment, live worms that will move around on the bottom after you add them, like maybe live blackworms, might entice him to eat. An earthworm pretty much always does the job.

Totally worked!

I put a live worm in the tank, dug it out the field behind my house which is a chalk down nature reserve and I know no chemicals are used in the area and he loved it! Munched it right away.

Cute little guy is quite the hunter and now is obsessed with finding another!

I agree he is not used to being in captivity, he does not like the bright lights so I turned them off and will slowly increase the time they are on over the next few days and gets very spooked by people approaching the tank too fast, going to be a while before he totally settles but so worth it and to see him eating and hunting is awesome!