The Puffer Forum

I have 2 GSPs. The first one my mother picked out and he has more of a streme line body than a round belly. No sunk in belly look or anything. He still looks healthy and gets a nice round belly when he eats, but then it goes right back to streme line looking after a while. The other one I got had more of a rounded belly. Even in the morning after going all night without eating he looks like he just ate because of his round belly. They eat the exact same ammount, but the bigger one is permanently round, he gets even rounder when he eats. He was like that when I got him. Is he over weight or is he constipated? Does he have a parrasite? I've had the puffers for about a week now.

If they are housed in the same tank, one fish is dominant and gets more food.

If they are not co-housed, one may still be more active than the other. Puffers should not look fat. They certainly show rounded bellies after eating, they have no ribs ans so lack the muscles that obscure that in most fish.

Parasites make fish look thin much more than fat.

But if they always look recently fed, they are over-fed and fat, and that is not healthy long-term. Many captive puffers are over-fed and too fat. That is a an owner/caregiver issue. Captive fish do not have to search constantly for food as their wild cousins do, but they have no way of knowing that or really of ever learning it. In the wild they stuff themselves when food is available, so they can survive when it is not available. In captivity that will shorten their lives. The keeper controls the amount of food, not Mother Nature.

HTH

They are housed together and I am constantly watching them and they NEVER have an issue with eaother, no fighting at all, but they are still young, I'll have to wait and see when they get older. And when I feed them I watch to make sure they both get an equal ammount of food and they do, so one isn't gtting more food than the other. And I do not over feed my GSPs, once a day is how often I feed them.

green_spotted_girl wrote:They are housed together and I am constantly watching them and they NEVER have an issue with eaother

you want to worry about what goes on when you arent there, or at least when they think you arent there. i used to have two GSP's who got along great, dug for snails together, followed eachother, never really saw aggression from either one. i too had one bigger and one smaller one, but honestly the smaller one was the pig and would eat and eat and eat if i allowed it(this one was bigger when i first introduced it to my other GSP but the other hit a spurt of growth and gained like an inch on the other). i made sure both got their share of food. i moved my tank from one room to the other during an upgrade which was now in view from the couch but at a far angle so they couldnt see us unless there was movement. well thats when i saw what was going on and why my bigger puff was timid towards the other and would kind of watch his back if the other came too close. when they thought we werent paying attention(or no movement to distract them) my smaller of the two would chase the bigger one. and sometimes it became more than a chase, i would hear water splash, which i couldnt hear before. then the one being chased(the one i kept) would go to a hiding spot and be stressed out. i began the search for a new home for the aggressive puff. a friend took it off my hands for his 90 gallon. he has been fine in that tank since, hasnt chased any fish and hes in there with a bunch of damsels and a wrasse or two. has killed any hermits/cleanup my friend has tried out tho, luckily it was all cheap livestock and not some expensive shrimp or crab

There were a few threads going on here about there being different species and regional variants within the GSP group. Some have kept GSP's in perfect conditions but yet have only had them grow to around 3 inches while others in the same conditions have achieved length of 6 inches. This was a real interesting conversation because there was never any hard data just observational data amongst people on the board here including our Ph.D. Mentors.

That is a possibility that has never been proven and I agree with other members that say, in this case, it's more of a food issue, one that is dominant and getting more food that the other.

Without accurate data on the geographic origin of the LFS fish, we are highly unlikely to ever figure that one out. Subspecies and species affinis grouping may well have been selected out by varied environmental factors in the wild which we will never even hear about. If captive size could be associated with particular collection points, we might see correlations, but that info is never passed down through the various collectors, exporters, importers, distributors, and to the retail outlets.