The Puffer Forum

I have had this guy for ~ two months, he is in a 6x2x2 180 that had a lot of large plastic plants in it. Up until a few days ago he payed no attention to the plants. This morning i had to remove them all cause he was stripping them of their leaves and on some of them he actually cut the stems off them. The tank is full of little pieces of plastic now Now i see he is nawing on one of the caves and taking a pretty nice chunk out of it.

Has anyone had a Fahaka behave like this? I see from pics and videos there are quite a few of you that have these guys housed in fairly heavily planted tanks. Are there any live, fairly hardy plants that might have a bad taste to him that he wouldn't mess with?

This is quite common with any Puffer they love to bite and are certainly inquisitive. I have had puffers who pay no attention to plants and decor and I have had others where the only thing I can put in the tank is lava rock.

Maybe hes a bit bored of how it looks and wants to re-decorate.

Have you tried a serious re-arrange round of the tank see, if that puts him off ripping everything apart by having new surroundings to explore in a sense.

I'm constantly cleaning up pieces of plastic plants. Just replaced all of them this year, as they were getting quite sparse.

Luckely my little fahaka still loves all the plants. Have not seen him destroy anything

I got mine a *chew toy* .... which is Tetra Bamboo stalks. He knaws on them but cant really destroy them! I got him @ 6.5"s and he destroyed every plant i put in the tank! Bamboo seems to keep him occupied and chasing around the Danios =) (I'll post some pics so u know what im talking about next water change cause i bought more!) Found em on sale for half price normally each stalk is 12-18$ Got 17 stalks now =)

*Cheers*

I have live plants and mine is selectively destructive ha ha. He only destroys a certain species of plant but will leave the others alone. Guess he just doesn't like how it looks.