The Puffer Forum

Yup. Just the two of em in a 5-gallon hex. Bern thay was for quite some time. Then tonight I realize I hadn't seen the otto lately. Stirred things up and found a bit of him left- not a lot but big enough to find. So i did a w/c while i was messing witj things.

Gies to show ya: no matter how long or how old, puffs will eat their housemates- even the dwarf puffers!

My two girls live with several otocinclus. It's a heavily planted tank and I have added a new oto now and then when I was fairly certain one was gone. For a planted tank with small fish, it's actually counterproductive to dig around for a tiny corpse that will only provide plant nutrients anyway, as disturbing the plants will disturb the substrate, which will release ammonia into the water.

If you keep any kind of community fish with carnivorous or omnivorous tendencies no matter how peaceful they are, you'll find that if one of them dies and you don't catch it and pull it out immediately, the rest will start a buffet line (which never works, because they all cut in line). Even a small, shy tetra like a neon tetra in a school will eat at the corpse of one of their dead brethren. It doesn't mean they'll attack and eat each other, though.

My only point is that the oto may have died on its own and your puffer took advantage of free meat.

On the other hand, as picky as my girls are (I can't get them to touch anything but frozen bloodworms and snails), it's just as likely that a dead oto was just left to decay, which might be what happened to yours.