The Puffer Forum

So, after the loss of one of our DPs a couple of months back the remaining five are doing well. Somewhere along the line they suddenly grew without me noticing and look all grown up and mature now. Life's been kind of busy recently and, other than thowing food in the tank for them and water changes, they've not really been getting much attention. In the last couple of days I've finally gotten around to really paying attention to them again.

Now that they all grown up I can sex them and it appears that we have four males and one female. Is this ratio going to cause me problems? The female and one of the males seem to hang out on the right half of the tank and the other three males in the left hand side. I've not noticed any problems with aggression, etc other than occasional bit of half-hearted chasing. The tank is a heavily planted Juwel Lido 120. The DPs share it with otos - I put five in there a few months back, we definitely still have three alive.

Clare

Generally more females to males works as aggresion is spread. What size tank are they in? Regardless you may need to loose some males and up the females.

I think the thought is 3 females to 1 male iirc

That's what I thought for the ratio. Unfortunately, this is what I ended up with.

what size tank is it? what ratio did you end up with?

Can you post pics of the tank

This is a general rule. But as ever it depends on the individual puffer. I have spent a long time messing with my dp mix. As a rule this is correct however i have apparently a gay couple of males who are housed with dwarf cichlids with no trouble. The last thing i would suggest is to house males together or with any other fish for that matter. They should not be housed with anything else. Just saying keep an eye out and if it kicks off have a back up, if it doesnt leave be. They might (1 in a million) like each other, just maybe. But that is a real male heavy mix, maybe loose 2 males and replace with 2 females and see how it goes?

I'm sure with any other fish I would find it easy to replace a couple of males with some females. These guys were absolute murder to get hold of up here in Scotland - I've only found one place that sells them within a 1.5 hours drive of where I live. And they're only available as juvies, so if I replaced them it would still be a lottery on what I end up with. (sigh!)

2 females per 1 male is fine.

I started with 5 DPs myself, and wound up with 3 males and 2 females once they'd matured. The males started to really fight, especially at feeding time, and were actually causing one another injury. I took 2 of the males back to the store and now have a happy and harmonious tank with 1 male and 2 females.

How big is the tank? If it really is that difficult to trade them out, your best bet is to make sure it's extra large (like 55g) & pack that tank with visually complicated plants/decor.

Pufferpunk, its a 120l tank, which places it in the region of 30 US gallon. Very roughly it is 2ft long, 2ft high and 1.5ft deep. It's heavily planted (100% of the substrate is covered) with a mix of jungle val, cambomba, pondweed and a bunch of plants that look like swords but I have no idea what they actually are. The tank is basically an aquatic jungle. Some of the plants reach the surface of water, some come to about half way up. We never put any caves or hideyspots in - maybe its something I should get round to doing - but there's plenty of hiding places within the plants.

There's been no real aggression so far...I'm just wondering how long its going to last like that.

The shop we got them from will most likely take back some of the males. I don't think they'll be able to get more adults in though - we'd have to take our chances on sexes with babies. Closer to home, my local go-to store for ordering particular species in is very reluctant to order DPs, something to do with he has to place a minimum order and he'll struggle to get rid of the rest. The entire thing will be a logistical nightmare but if we do get aggression developing down the line then its something we're going to have to figure out. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that everyone will continue to get on but I may be living in a dream world!

Can you post a FTS(full tank shot), it sound beautiful

That may be a little tight for all those males, only time will tell though. And +1 for a tank shot sounds awesome.

sounds like how i want my tank!!! ... its a bit pricey for me to fill up a 65g with plants though

Plants do grow and multiply. Jungle is just what DP like and need. Try feeding at wo opposite locations to help reduce male:male aggression.

If you are not interested in breeding, and all-male tank has worked for me, but not a mixed sex tank with more males than females.

It would be a shame not to breed them though, that tank sounds near-ideal.