The Puffer Forum

Yay! We got in a shipment of saltwater fish Tuesday night at the LFS where I work, and among the newcomers was a gorgeous little 2" valentini, very healthy-looking. I've wanted one for a while, so she is now at home with me in my reef tank and her name is Lu-Lu. She hid for a few hours, but now she's out exploring, and she's already eaten a bit of mysis shrimp, which I was glad to see.

We also got in a baby porc; good as dead, pretty much, judging from the looks of it (emaciated, lying on the bottom, showing no interest in even live foods). Also in the shipment was a toby that looks very much like a solandri, except without the large blue spots on either side. I'm wondering if it could be a Hawaiian white-spotted toby... Anyway, I was happy about my new addition so I had to post about it.

I know the solid spotted Toby might possibly the C. epilapmrus. I love little Valentini's they are so docile, or at least the ones I have had are. Where are our pictures eh?

Yes where are the pictures? This post is worthless without pictures!

Similar to the epilamprus, but on the dorsal area the spots don't thin out on the fish we have at the store - they're more evenly spaced and sized, like they are on a solandri.

I'll try my best to get a good pic or two of her, although you may have to settle for phone pics as the old Kodak DC280 I have doesn't do closeups too well.

Yay!

Any pictures are good pictures.

Well as I warned you, these are some bad phone pics, but here she is:

Aw! Too cute!!

Yes and she's already coming up to the side of the tank and looking at me! She's also already cleaned off a little patch of live rock, much to my amazement, and has a nice round little belly. Looks like I'll have to start setting aside more money for live rock.

What kind of corals do you have in there?

marksrush wrote:We also got in a baby porc; good as dead, pretty much, judging from the looks of it (emaciated, lying on the bottom, showing no interest in even live foods).

Funny you should say that as my LFS said that most baby 1inch porcs never make it

Many many many porcupine puffers and burrs come in with internal parasites. I do remember receiving shipments that we would have to treat before selling them.

yunachin wrote:What kind of corals do you have in there?

I have a small red monti cap frag, a leather (I think it's a cabbage), some mushrooms, a palythoa of some sort, a couple of yellow polyps, some small unidentified polyps on the same rock as the palythoa, and a few colonies of these individual little purple polyps that are spread throughout one of our display tanks at the store. Sorry I can't be more specific but I am only just starting to learn about reef tanks; what I have now (setup included) was all given to my by the store precisely so I would learn about them and hopefully become passionate about them, but at this stage I'm still having difficulty identifying the various types of coral.

yunachin wrote:Many many many porcupine puffers and burrs come in with internal parasites. I do remember receiving shipments that we would have to treat before selling them.

I really don't know why we continue to get porcs. They always seem to be emaciated, with no appetite, and then after a day or two they ich out, stop swimming, and die. It makes me ill to see it, and it makes no business sense either because they never make it long enough to get sold. Every other puffer we get is beautiful, active, and eats like a pig...or, well, puffer.

That's fine. I didn't need specifics just curious.
Watch that little puffer as he may develop a taste for your zoas.

As for the porcupine puffers..I agree the suppliers should treat them before sending them to the individual stores but I know they don't. I am sure if they start upon arrival then the odds of them melting 2 days after they get to the fish stores will greatly decrease.

She's such a cutie.