The Puffer Forum

what are some corals that are safe to keep with GSPs?

I just bought some ricordeas, hopefully they are. I'll let you know.

none are 100% safe but mushrooms, leathers, and other soft corals or sometimes kept in harmony with GSPs. I have some button polyps, xenia, and mushrooms in with my GSPs and they leave them alone. It works because they are cheap and they taste real bad. Whatever you do don't put anything expensive in with your pufffers just in case they decide to make them a gourmet snack.

I have a 90g with 2 GSPs in it with the following corals at the moment.

Kenya Tree
Duncan
Eelegance
Galaxea
Green Star Polyps
Eagle Eye Zoas
Sarcophyton Toadstool
A purple Efflatounaria
Small mystery coral that kinda looks like super tiny Xenia

I add the Kenya Tree first and both puffers almost immediately went to investigate and pick at it but didn't appear to really damage it all and left it alone after a few attempts. Next I added the Duncans, and unfortunately both puffers appeared to think it was food as they went for it and actually did take some small chunks out of the flesh. I ended up removing the Duncan temporarily to the refugium for a couple days until the following weekend when I could watch things more closely. After putting the Duncan back in the tank the puffers tried to go for it again, I basically sat there watching them and shooing them away for about half an hour until they seemed to be ignoring it. Over the next couple days I kept a close eye on it and would rush over to the tank to swat them away whenever they got close.

I couldn't say for certain if they just didn't really like the way it tasted after all or if they're actually smart enough to be trained by my constant batting but they've since left the Duncan and every other coral I've added alone, it's been about 3 months since I added that Duncan. They'll occasionally try to pick out food I give to the corals, but that's rare and the last time I saw them do it was with the Elegance which I think stung one of my GSPs judging by the way she took off when her belly touched it's feeders.

Keep in mind--ALL puffers are different.

Pufferpunk wrote:Keep in mind--ALL puffers are different.

Of course.

Do larger puffers attack coral? I know they're not considered reef safe, any puffer, but I assume that's mostly because they'll attack most/all inverts if they can. Would a Porcupine attack any corals for instance? I'd like to have one some day but honestly pure FOWLRs strike me as kind of boring and a waste of a big tank.

Stick with leathers & xenia--I hear they taste bad. Not that I've ever tried them...

the ricordea have been in the tank for 2 days now, and other than a quick taste as I was dropping them in, my GSP hasn't even looked at them. He like to forage on the live rock pretty much all day but seems to have no interest in the rics.

I have colt, shrooms, zoas, xenia, tumpet, and gsp corals all with my green spotted and she doent mess with anything