The Puffer Forum

Two of my dwarf puffers got in a fight today at feeding time. They were about the same size. One locked it's teeth into the belly of another, and wouldn't let go for about 20 seconds. The injury looks like skin damage. The injured fish started eating and is swimming ok. Should I be worried about infection? Is there anything I can do to help infection? I don't have a second tank to quarantine the injured fish. My LFS is closed now, but I could get meds tomorrow.

clean water and melafix

Are they both males?

I didn't think to look if they were both males. 6 dwarf puffers in 80 gallons, but the tank size doesn't help at feeding time because they're all in the same place.

They were facing each other, with a shrimp net full of blood worms between them. I dip the net in water to defrost the worms. The attacking puffer went for the net, but I removed the net at the same moment, and it ended up attacking a fellow puffer instead. I think the attack was more of a mistake than intentional, however it's normal for them to snap at each other during feeding time. The victim puffer didn't hide after. It went back to normal behavior immediately, eating, and even snapping at other puffers. My experience with injured dogs and cats is they baby the injury for a long time even when it's minor. I have no idea if fish do this too.

I think the flexible stretchy skin saved the victim puffer. The area isn't discolored (it's not pink), but the skin is either wrinkled, scratched, or just sticking out. The skin doesn't seem to be actually broken.

I think I'll start defrosting the worms outside the tank, so the puffers don't develop aggression while they wait to be fed.

Try two or more feeding spots.

You should always defrost the worms outside the tank & rinse off the "juice" they are in, to prevent adding nitrate to your tank.

It may be related. I was in the hospital for about 10 days and didn't do water changes. I got out on Monday. My friend fed them every second day. Nitrates are 0, but I read about hormones in the water that can cause aggression in puffers. I'm going to change 10-14% per day for a couple weeks to see if that helps. I can't change more than that because my tap water is freezing and I only have two water buckets. Water temperature is always 80F because of air temperature, I wish it was lower.

I watched two males circling each other today. They fan their tail fin, and seem to flatten their body to make themselves look bigger (like a discus shape), then one takes a shot at the other. Instead of territories, my group of dwarf puffers stay in a group all the time.

Last night there was another fight, an hour after I fed them. The victim puffed during the attack, and then unpuffed. He seems fine. I tried to look, and it looked like two males, identified by their pale markings on their back. If I'm right, I had two males and four females. Both males were the same size, and I returned one of them to the store today. I have enough water for two males, so maybe the problem was the ratio to females. Hopefully things will be better now.

The females also nip at each other.

Surest way to ID males are by the wrinkles behind the eyes: library/puffers-in-focus/sexing-carinot ... rf-puffer/

But for puffers, there may or may not be any volume of water "safe" for two males. There are massive differences in aggression between males or between females, or between males and females. Puffer aggression is highly individual. Some species tend to be worse than others, but even that is not carved in stone. We do use a number of "rules of thumb", but none of those are carved in stone. They are just the way things usually happen. There are no promises attached.

You might be able to alleviate some aggression by adding a couple more females, if you can find some already sexed.

Could you post a FTS? Lots & lots of decor, breaking up lines of sight, in addition to LGP's suggestion could help, if there is enough room for more puffers. Or maybe you could exchange one of the males for a female>

My remaining male, after 24 hours of being the only male, looks like he became a lot darker in color on his back. I don't think I'm imaging things. The checker pattern is extremely faded into an olive color, compared to before. Does this mean anything to any of you? Could this be related to stress, or the lack of stress?

He's chasing off females, for territory, but he's not nearly as aggressive as before. The chasing off is fairly friendly and mild now. I don't know if I returned the aggressive male or not, because they were both the same size, they were hard to tell apart.

I have a lot of broken lines of sight, but the puffers prefer open water near the surface where I feed them. This is a photo from 2 months ago before adding the puffers, it's a little more dense now:

WOW that is a beautiful tank.....wanna set up my 75 LOL