The Puffer Forum

I bought my GSP at 1.5" and he's not more than 2" now, and he's now a year older than when I bought him. I have no idea how old he was when I bought him. I was expecting him to hit 3" within a year from what some other people told me about their GSPs.

I have him at very high brackish right now. Assuming he's likely about 1.5 to 2 years old, should I have him at marine soon? He's in a 30g by himself, and he eats bloodworms, brine shrimp, and gets a lot of snails. I feed him once a day, since the foods are meaty and rich.
Should I be feeding him more often? Adding maybe some chunks of shrimp?

W

Being in a 30 gal, I doubt it is stunted....What do you mean by very high brackish? What is the sg?

As far as feeding goes...IMO you should only feed once a day, and only 6 out of every 7 days. Feed him only until his stomach is slightly rounded...not sticking way out or dragging on the ground. Puffers are beggars and having no rib cage, they can eat long past the point that it is good for them. This can lead to over-polluted water and possible constipation or other health problems.

You might want to try soaking his food in good vitamins & change the variety a bit. Try foods from the fish dept of your local grocery store.

It's close to full marine (~1.018).


W

GSPs have growth rate differences, just like they have spot and pattern differences which probably relate to where they are from or some other reason.

A small percentage of GSPs grow extremely slow. Even if you increased his food intake, you would just be making him fatter as apposed to giving him length.

I would not think that having him in a 30 gallon would be stunting him. However, 30 gallons is the minimum. When took some of my slow growers and put them into 55s, I believe their growth picked up a tiny bit...still very slow growers. I re-homed some of them for financial reasons and to this day, they are still small! I have other GSPs that I got at the same time as the slow growers and they are so big they have outgrown their 55 (which is getting upgraded).

It is a genetic thing!

In my opinion there are several species or at least subspecies within what we now define as T. nigroviridis. However, I have no good answer on how to tell them apart and therefore one needs to plan for the largest ones with regard to tank size.

Just like purplecandle I've seen quite a number of freshly imported specimens in tanks >50 gallons per specimen that never grew beyond 3 inches and others that easily reached 5-6 inches pretty fast. In my opinion stunting cannot be the (only) reason for small GSPs.

Any fish with that big a range almost has to have variant populations. Whether they end up separate species, subspecies or some combo of that will depend on the taxonomists and whether or not it is all physical characteristics or uses nuclear and cytoplasmic genetic material as well.

Taxonomy needs to go modern (I know that a combo of cost and unfamiliarity is the issue). I have trouble with species (as in some Rainbowfish) labeled as a certain species but their non-nuclear genetic material is from another species. That bothers me. Sooner or later those issues have to be resolved.