The Puffer Forum

I was out with my girlfriend wandering pet stores and stumbled across a petco with two puffers. The tag said Figure 8 but the species name was the ceylons. I pondered it, they are very thin but active and alert and investigating things. I left for awhile and as i was heading home (i live 150 miles north of her) i stopped back and picked them up.

I had mixed emotions about it since i dont really want to encourage people to keep ordering them in and not do right by them. She they were eating and i replied with "why werent the being fed then?" she didnt have much to say about that.

However she did do an excellent job of double bagging them and provided me with a small styro to take them home in. The one i had is closer to a cooler than a two bag styro.

Now they are sitting acclimating slowly to the water in the BW quarantine tank. They are swimming around and behaving like normal puffers though they have about 1/3 the weight...they look like puffless puffers.

Unfortunatly these weren't the worst i saw this weekend. A LFS had some GSPs that were so bad looking i was surprised they were breathing. I mentioned it to them and got the normal....sigh and muttered response. They were in BW or some salinity but the Modestus puffers were beating the hell right out of them nearly continually, when they werent beating the hell out of each other.

IF anything these two new fellows look better now than they have so far. I thnk they are liking the slightly salted water idea . I hope this works out cause in two weeks i start cycling a 55 gallon BW tank or possibly a 75 gallon not sure which it will be.

This is the first time i've seen ceylons available in a store in michigan so it was partly that that convinced me to try to bail these two out of the toilet of doom destination they were heading for.

Jason

PS i'll keep everyone updated as time goes on. One bonus is they are about the same size as my smaller healthy one so when i have a larger tank cycled it wont be too nerve wracking to introduce them.

that's awsome P)0 good luck with those puffers and keep us posted. buy them some small ghost shrimp mine loved them when i brought him home

I'd go w/the 75g, of course!

How big is your brackish qt?

let's see some pictures!

Good for you, Jason!

Its a sad state of affairs when our puffer purchases seem more like rescues than not. Hoping to read that this rescue turns out well - for you as well as them!

Nice! P)0 If you do get ghost shrimp, just remember to gut-load them with algae wafers, itll give the puffers some good nutrition!

keep us posted!

-John

These fish are like kids - you've got to trick them into eating their veggies. I put some green beans in the middle of an ice cream cone (then dimmed the lights) about 10 years ago and I still hear about how sneaky I am.

Well as of late last night they were swimming aroung the 20g long that i have set up for quarentine. They ate like pigs when i offered them a piece of thawed frozen shrimp. I"ll get some ghost shrimp tomorrow after work. Now one is poking around by the filter intake looking for tid bits and the other is resting under an over hanging rock.

They had a couple uptight moments while feeding but neither one connected any bites just bluff and rushing mostly.

Its odd how these two keep separate and my other two, who i'll admit have been living together for months now, rarely get more than a third of the tank away from each other.

Until i see how well these two settle in with each other i'm not risking upsetting the happy life of my other two.

Anyhow so far so good, i'll try to get some pics when i can sneak out of my girlfriends apartment with the camera sometime.

Either that or i'll take these two down there when i get a tank set up, she has the hump back puffer there and i have the ceylons and the modestus here. She and i have seriously been thinking about just working with puffer since most dont get nearly as huge as some of the predatory fish i keep now.

On an unrelated side note my crayfish seems to be "playing" with an empty mystry snail shell....she was rolling it around and searchign for things inside it....that gives me a idea on how to stimulate her a little with out getting the wrong end of things .

Jason

PS has anyone ever bred ceylons in captivity? I'd take a stab in the dark to say that its probably because most never live long enough to reach adult sizes.

I am uncertain about captive breeding, but both these and the GSP are reported as substrate spawners:

http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/Fishindx/puf-fluv.htm

and comparable info on GSP:

http://www.pufferfish.co.uk/aquaria/spe ... /index.htm

click on Tetraodon nigrifilis - yes, I krow the name is not what we use

Well for an update to the the two new fellows. Their tank either sprung a leak or the filter was dripping somehwere so i had to take a gamble and move them into the tank with my other two. They are divided from the established ones.

The long timers dont seem to like this arrangement much so hopefully tomorrow i'll be able to get a new tank and just transfer the decorations and sand into a new water holding tank. I"m thinking it was a slow seam leak.

Well anyhow the long timers, paled out and hid for most of the day, which is unusual since they are normally beggin for food and attention. I did a 25% water change and boosted the salinity ever so slightly and that seems to have put the spunk back into them.

I just fed them and all are eating aggressively. But i've noticed so far the original two still swim together with no aggression at all but the new fellows were sparring for awhile bit tonight. No ripped fins but i'm starting to worry about general stress on them. So i think tomorrow they will be getting a new tank with an divider.

i'm starting to think my first two are odd in their behavior. They still arent perfectly happy with me "egghead" the larger egg shaped one has taken tonights meal and drug it into a cave to eat it. "little one" has eaten a share and went back under the over hang it calls home.

The new ones are stuffing themselves again but getting along better. I'll keep updating with observations and random thoughts as best i can. I really like these but wow they are all so different in moods and personality, i can definatly tell when one is pouting in the corner (usually literally).

On a side now, the modestus has grown abotu 1/4 inch and still eats what ever he wants . Though the light over the tank is causing algae issues i'll have to deal with soon

Anyhow take care everyone and i'm going to go back to watching my moody little critters.

jason