The Puffer Forum

I'm wondering what the deal is. I just brought home a little male valentini (I'm supposing it's a male, since it has lines radiating backward from his eyes), released it into my reef tank, and my bigger female valentini is not happy with it. I thought these were supposed to be shoaling fish, but the female doesn't seem to have heard about that. Anyone have any insight here? Thank goodness there's a zillion places to hide, even in this nano 20 gallon, or else the little male might've taken on some damage by now. Will she just chase him around for a little bit, and then accept him, or do you think she's going to kill him?

marksrush wrote:I'm wondering what the deal is. I just brought home a little male valentini (I'm supposing it's a male, since it has lines radiating backward from his eyes), released it into my reef tank, and my bigger female valentini is not happy with it. I thought these were supposed to be shoaling fish, but the female doesn't seem to have heard about that. Anyone have any insight here? Thank goodness there's a zillion places to hide, even in this nano 20 gallon, or else the little male might've taken on some damage by now. Will she just chase him around for a little bit, and then accept him, or do you think she's going to kill him?

How long have you had them in the same tank?

Most fish tend to be rather aggressive toward newcomers, and this is especially true if the tank doesn't allow for an appropriate amount of room for the both of them. If my memory serves me right, a Valintini grows to roughly 4.5 inches give or take. A 20 gallon tank with just one Valintini seems to be the bare minimum you could get away with. The female might be less aggressive if you had a bigger tank to keep the both of them.

This is all hypothetical, though.

Valid points, definitely; in fact, I shouldn't even put them together in such a small tank because each one needs at least 20 gallons. However it seems odd, because like I posted above, I thought these were supposed to be schooling fish.

Right now, though, it's a moot point. I put the larger valentini, the female, in my 55 with my Ceylon because she was biting the male and would not leave him alone. I wouldn't have even dreamed of doing this except that for some reason, this Ceylon (so far) is anything but aggressive. In fact, when I added the few damsels that are in that tank, he did his best to get away from them even though they were not harassing him in the least, and now that the valentini is in there, he's trying to stay away from her, too - even though he's easily four times her size. She, on the other hand, seems to love her new larger home, and is poking about inspecting things like nothing ever happened. The new little one-inch male in my reef tank is hiding still, probably afraid that that meanie Lu-Lu is still around and waiting to beat up on him, but once he sees she's no longer around, I think he'll be happy in a 20 gallon until I can get something larger.

Haha, best of luck. Puffers are odd little balls of fat. My GSPs have proven to be rather docile also. Good luck sorting everything out

You should try putting the female in the males tank and see how that works out. With my pair the female was added to the males tank. Can you observe any body language? I.e. flaring of the fins, making themselves as flat as possible with their crest?

Update: the male is nowhere to be seen. Not in the tank, from what I can see (granted, there are tons of hiding spots as the live rock I've got is riddled with holes and tunnels), not on the floor, and not on my bed (it's next to the tank). I lifted up every piece of live rock in the tank, but I still didn't see him. The female valentini is in the 55, like I said, and originally I thought she had puffed up a little, and that, hopefully, is the case - but her stomach hasn't shrunk, and it's about the size of a small valentini - like the male. I absolutely refuse to believe that she ate him. Surely he'll turn up.

He was probably hiding in a whole in the LR when you picked it up. I am with you that she didnt eat him. She just got her spines ruffled and probably has yet to calm down.

You're right, pufferfreak - he must've been hiding, because I found him this morning. It wasn't good: he was stuck to the intake of my power head, and seems pretty weak. I thought he was dead at first, but that's not the case - although I won't be surprised if he doesn't make it, judging by the way he looks, poor little guy. I guess she beat up on him pretty bad, as he has some bite marks along his side and close to his tail. Plus, spending the night stuck to a power head intake did not help matters, no doubt. Right now, he's lying on the bottom (right side up, at least) but not moving. I'm hoping that with a little rest and recuperation time he might recover, but I'm also prepared for the worst.

How very depressing. Fishbase.org and wikipedia both state that this fish is commonly found in shoals, so I was more or less confident this would work out great and I was looking forward to having the two of them and eventually possibly even more, once I move my Ceylon into a bigger tank because I was then going to move both the valentinis into the Ceylon's old 55. The way I feel right now, though, I may never buy another fish ever because I feel so bad that I put some poor little innocent baby creature through this hell.

Update: he died. I was watching when it happened. He hadn't been moving at all, not even his fins, but all of a sudden he started fluttering them, puffed up, then let it out. Shortly after, the green light that was in his eyes went dull, and he was gone. I waited quite a while to make sure, hoping I was wrong, but no, he was dead.

My original valentini is back in the reef tank. I had put her in with my Ceylon, hoping that would work out (hah!) since he's not shown any interest in any other fish I've put in his tank, but discovered this morning that she had most of her caudal fin gone, with a big bite taken out of one of her other fins. Nothing, though, that she won't recover from. Please no one say that you're sorry, because this was all my fault and I should've known better.

This is probably a little off course, but there's a rule that pretty much every English major must follow: Do not ever trust or use Wikipedia.

For Valentinis, LiveAquaria states that "A 30 gallon or larger, fish-only aquarium is suitable. It will fight with conspecifics such as the filefish, large finned fish, and other tobies. It may be aggressive at times, nipping the fins of tank mates, leaving a circular hole as its mark."

Yes, I know you have to be vary wary of what you read on Wikipedia. But fishbase.org is supposed to be reliable, isn't it? Unfortunately our site is no help because there's almost nothing on valentinis on their page in the PufferPedia, so Wikipedia and fishbase.org were all I had to go on. And what you quoted from liveaquaria runs counter to what fishbase.org says...although of course in this case, liveaquaria was right on the money - although it seems odd that she has never once even tried to mess with the little yellow watchman that shares the tank with her.

I've heard that Fishbase.org has a lot of misleading and incorrect information on assorted fish. However, I have seen Valentinis in pairs IF the tank is large enough, e.g., a 60 gallon FOWLR with just the Valentinis. I think that in the wild, Valentinis are sometimes known to be in shoals. I think in cases where Valentinis are coexisting in aquariums, the two fish were likely introduced together at the same time and were roughly the same size, and the tanks were like 60 gallon or larger.

Puffers are odd, though. Their personalities can't really be figured out without some trial and error.

Jivenjune wrote:I've heard that Fishbase.org has a lot of misleading and incorrect information on assorted fish. However, I have seen Valentinis in pairs IF the tank is large enough, e.g., a 60 gallon FOWLR with just the Valentinis. I think that in the wild, Valentinis are sometimes known to be in shoals. I think in cases where Valentinis are coexisting in aquariums, the two fish were likely introduced together at the same time and were roughly the same size, and the tanks were like 60 gallon or larger.

Puffers are odd, though. Their personalities can't really be figured out without some trial and error.

Hmm, I hadn't heard that about fishbase.org, but I will definitely keep that in mind from now on. I'm at the point now where I'm going to be skeptical about whatever I read about puffers, regardless of the source - and it's going to be a very long time before I buy another one.

Im sure fishbase and wikipedia are both right. Shoaling doesnt mean just two fish. It means...well a shoal. 5+ fish at least.

Some shoaling fish, like tetras, are more aggressive when they're in smaller groups/pairs.

Almost every single time I have ever seen them in the wild, they have been in pairs or 3s.