The Puffer Forum

Which is the easiest Puffer Fish to care for?

That's kind of a tricky question. They all need very clean water, which means regular water changes. They all need a variety of food items which are not always readily available at your LFS. You're probably looking at one of the freshwater varieties, as going that route won't require all the extra products and work that having a saltwater or brackish fish would require. I guess my vote would go for an auriglobus modestus, the Bronze puffer: they don't get real big (4"), don't require sand or fine gravel as a substrate, and the foods they need are pretty easy to find, with the exception of snails, but then you can set up small snail breeding tank for cheap. I have a feeling someone else might suggest dwarf puffers, but I've never kept them so I'm not sure what all is involved in keeping them happy.

There really is not any easy puffer to care for. All fish can be tricky for a beginner.

I would suggest a dwarf puffer. They grow to an inch and if kept in the right male/female ratio kept in a heavily planted tank the aggression can be cut. Some owners have never fed their dwarf puffers a snail in their life and they do fine. Although a variety of foods is good for your puffer. Please check out the dwarf puffer profile underneath the Learn tab in the PufferPedia.

20ppm's or over is dangerous to puffers in periods of time. So weekly water chages of 50% or so is ideal. Good luck!

I'd say Dwarf Puffer too. But what most people would say if your a beginner, and your willing to care for it. You might want to try a F8.

my vote would go for an auriglobus modestus

Like the SAP, they will need regular teeth trimming. DPs generally do not.

How much fishkeeping experience in general, do you have?

How big is the tank you have to work with?

I had virtually no fish-keeping experience before May of this year. I started with a GSP and that was a disaster. HOWEVER, I think came here and put a DP in my 5-gallon and he's still living! A couple months later, I set up a 30-long brackish tank and put in 2 F8s. Is very fun testing the water and salt and knowing your levels are good and doing water changes to keep your puffer's world perfect. Oh yeah- and watching them hunt snails! I just put some filter floss around my carbon in my two working tanks. I'm hoping this will polish my water even more. I'm nearly ready to set up my 3rd tank- another DP tank. Its fun having a little world in there, with cherry shrimp and ottos doing their thing to keep the balance. I'm feeling like I want to try salt- FOWLR, not reef- but not until I get a savings for it. I'd love to do a Fahaka with sand- but that's fresh. One day a dogface salty would be nice, too!

My vote goes for the Dwarf puffer, they have to be one of the easiest puffers to take care of. Rarely do they have dental issues and you don't need a huge tank for them either. They were my very first puffer and they are to blame for my puffer addiction too!

I find my DPs to be really easy to care for. You don't have to spend a ton on a huge tank and equipment and decorations and gravel/sand, etc. Water changes don't take long. They don't need really specialized "crunchy" foods - frozen and live worms and so forth will be fine (although they do enjoy their snails!). They're FW, and therefore cheaper and easier. They're absolutely adorable, too!

The one difficult part is that darned gender ratio! You can eliminate that problem entirely by keeping a singleton. If you want more than one, be sure to read the article in the Library (Learn tab at the top of the page) on sexing them.

They're probably the most problem-free puffers. TLC, a good diet, and a rigorous water change schedule is really about it.

Just a note on the Dwarf puffer. I have a theory, and I stick by my theory, which is -- if you keep more than 5 DP's, there doesn't seem to be any aggression issues, even if you don't get your male/female ratio right. Since the very start I've kept more than 5 Dwarf puffers and other than some chasing, which all puffers will do to protect their territory, I've not had any problems. The worse thing I can think of is when I had my MBU puffer in the community tank and the DP's seemed to pick on him, mostly just biting his tail. Of course, I moved him immediately, so that ended that.
But currently, I have between 8 and 10 DP's --hard to count because they are all loose in my Cube tank. But I have seen them swimming around together, I call them the DP mob because there's so many of them hanging together, and I'm sure there's not a correct ratio in there. Of course I credit the success of having a good puffer mob to also providing lots of hiding places, a good-size aquarium, and lots of plants which break up line of sight. I think when DP's are cramped, that's when you are most likely to have trouble from them.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Adding to that, there aren't any agression issues with one per tank, either.

I would say DP as well, I had 3 of them while back RIP died cuz of IP's