The Puffer Forum

My betta is on his last legs right now so I went to my local exotic pet store to see if they could special order any red eye puffers for me. I'll probably end up with one or two in a couple of weeks. It's been a long time since I've had any puffers and I'm excited. Last time I was there they had a baby fahaka, and they just got a shipment of green spotted and figure 8s that were still floating in the bags in the tanks this time. Not the best store when it comes to fish, but they're pretty decent and the fish guy is at least somewhat knowledgeable. They've had lortetis and borneensis in previously and he thinks salivators. Who knows what I'll end up with.

Anyway, on to my question... he said that they do sometimes get blue eye red tail puffers in sometimes. He doesn't know that scientific name. I really have no idea what that would be. Any ideas? I'm looking for a smaller puffer since I don't have a huge tank and of all the small puffers that I know of... I have no idea what it could be.

The only two I can think of (off the top of my head without consulting the Aqualog book) with red tails are irrubesco and cutcutia, but neither has blue eyes, and I can't think of any that have blue eyes, although iridescence sometimes makes it look as if they are blueish.

After coming home and looking through the puffferpedia I thought it might just be iridescence also. Thinking again though, even if that's what it is, the eyes are still definitely more red than blue majority of the time. I'm honestly completely confused on that. Even a google search turned up absolutely nothing. I'm half tempted to call them tomorrow and let me know if they get anymore of those in just so I can come take a look at them and see if I have any idea what in the world they are.

my male irrubesco most pf the time looks as if he has blue eyes, dunno if thats down to the tnk lighting or what?