The Puffer Forum

I've got a 10g I'd love to put a dp in. Is there any other freshwater or brackish puffer I should consider? I'm wanting it to primarily eat my excess snails from my other tanks. They're MTS and I have 3 other tanks. So, now the newbie questions begin.

As I asked, are there other puffers I could consider?
Would I be able to put a pair in the 10g or would that be too much?
What's the minimum I can put in there for decorations? I know they're curious and like a lot but I'm on a budget and will get it setup "ok" first, then get the puffer, then add more as I can.
I think that's it for now. I know nothing about puffers but am here to learn and have known I've wanted one since I got into fish. I'm sure my questions will lead to answers that lead to more questions.

Oh, and the other question I had....how often do they puff? I want to see it but I know it's usually a reaction and an indication of stress.

Well, I don't think a puffer would be good for what you want it for.

First of all, MTS snails have extremely hard shells. While some puffers can safely eat them (the larger puffers), its risky to feed them as a puffer can break a tooth on them rather easily. A broken tooth can lead to infection, problems eating, the teeth not wearing evenly and growing through a lip, etc. I have kept dwarf puffers with MTS snails, they mainly ignored them but would suck them out of their shells when they got a chance (dwarfs are too small to try to bite them).

If you still want to do a puffer tank, your best bet would be dwarf puffers, which are fully freshwater. One male and two females is a good ratio for a 10 gallon tank. A 10 gallon is really too small for Figure 8's or other smaller breeds though.

Dwarf puffers are really into live plants and lots of hiding spaces, they like to hunt down their dinners. If you can't do live plants, they still need a lot of stuff to explore and to be able to get away from each other.

Puffers are scaleless fish, and very sensitve to bad water conditions, so make sure the tank is fully cycled before adding any puffers at all. You can do this by stealing gravel, decorations or filter media from your other tank, they'll bring in bacteria. They also need very clean water, so plan on 50% a week water changes and a good filter for water movement.. aim for at least 10x turnover per hour. An AquaClear Powerfilter that move 100gph would be perfect for a 10 gallon tank.

As far as the puffing.. a healthy puffer does it pretty rarely. Some of the really big species do it when they are hungry, like they are trying to intimidate their owners into hurrying up with the food. My burrfish puffs ocassionally if she gets stuck in a corner or tangled in some plants.. but she's not very smart . I've never seen any of my smaller species puff (dwarf, SAP, figure 8, gsp), though I have seen a photo of a puffed dwarf and it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. If you search around the photo/video forums here or on YouTube you can probably find a few shots of them puffing.

Excellent information. Thank you. I'll probably go for a couple of dwarf puffers then. I wasn't wanitng them to just eat the snails, just wanted to have something that might eat them up a little and it sounds like the dp will still do that, just in a different way. I know I could get a loach to do it but I want something with personality. I went ahead and put my guppies in that tank for right now cause I had a need to do so. So I'll just let them keep the tank cycled and I'll work on getting the live plants going in there then bring in the dp's at a later date.