The Puffer Forum

is there any kind of algae eater fish that i can put in a tank with 3 SAP?

albino bristlenose pleco

Strangely enough I had Oto's in with my Bornean and Nefastus puffers, they didn't pay it much attention. I moved the Otos to another tank with my Cutcutia (and so far, it's gone well), and replaced with an algae eater. Now my tank sparkles!
Some puffers don't pay any attention to algae eaters and substrate cleaners.

I have kept both Otocinclus cats and the already mentioned albino bristlenose cats with SAPs without any problems. I did use only female albino bristlenose with the puffers, as they rarely have many bristles - which I was afraid might invite nipping. But the SAPs are not very nippy IME.

The larger FW puffers (Fahakas and T. mbu) however are not safe with any catfish. Sooner or later they will eat them, commonly leaving the pectoral girdle as left-overs. Apparently they are "aware" that many catfish pectoral spines are weapons at least, and may carry irritants or toxins.

i was thinking about maybe getting a larger snail like a zebra snail..... my puffers are still really small and they might not bug him

Ha! I had Apple snails the size of my fist in a tank which also housed dwarf puffers. You'd think the DP's would be too small to bother those Apple snails, but they were crafty, they would hover around the snail, and as soon as it would come out of the shell, they would go in for a bite. They always waited until it came all the way out, and would give the poor thing a good hard bite! I finally rehomed the snails because I felt so badly for them.
So just keep this in mind when putting bigger snails into a tank with small puffers.

pufferpuggirl wrote:Ha! I had Apple snails the size of my fist in a tank which also housed dwarf puffers. You'd think the DP's would be too small to bother those Apple snails, but they were crafty, they would hover around the snail, and as soon as it would come out of the shell, they would go in for a bite. They always waited until it came all the way out, and would give the poor thing a good hard bite! I finally rehomed the snails because I felt so badly for them.
So just keep this in mind when putting bigger snails into a tank with small puffers.

lol what a bunch of jerks