The Puffer Forum

I'm a member on another forum, and was reading a thread by a guy who had a GSP in full marine, that died when he moved to a new house. He just posted pictures today with his new puffer. The only problem is its actually a F8 . I'm pretty sure a Figure eight cannot survive in a marine tank. I explained that its a F8 and how to tell the differences-eye-spots, 8 shape on the top off the head. I also linked to the puffer forum pedia about figure eight puffers. GAH. I hope that it helps the poor puffer. I would post a link but I don't think its allowed.

it is allowed ... may of us cross board link and post.

Here is the link

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.p ... 0&start=80

It looks like he's just going to discount what I said-I'm not very good at debating
I guess figure 8's can tolerate full marine, but when I've Google'd I have only found a couple rumors of f8's in marine, with no accounts on lifespan. He does have his salinity at 1.021, but I thought that f8's were low end brackish?
GAH. Euryhaline species are very confusing, and there seems to be no info on water conditions in native ranges of most brackish puffers.

You are correct on the sad state of good info on water conditions in the hobby lit. That is due to the comparable lack of info on them other than where caught. The so-called BW puffers are fish which are caught as early juveniles in BW conditions - which implies almost nothing of where they live as adults. And for what it is worth, where they live as adults does not say much about where they will live best in captivity. For F-8s we do know that they live longest in light BW, especially if the KH is high in relation to the salinity. But captive lifespans for those fish in those conditions really tell us little about the normal wild condition, where the average lifespan is short compared to what we can do in captivity. That is the opposite of many hobby fish where wild lifespan (and size) are greater than captive ones. But it is comparable to many Cichlids, where captive lives and size are equal or much greater than wild ones.

It is fluke that we know more about F-8s in captivity than GSPs, where we tend to keep the latter in full SW - which is not likely for the adult fish in the wild, but which we can mange better than mid-level BW.

If we ever learn to captive-bred the "BW" puffers, we will be able to select for longevity in specified conditions. Until them, we deal with a lot of uncertainties.