The Puffer Forum

Finally got my irrubescos, even if the group is smaller than I first intended (2M+4F): One of my LFS (Located in Belgium, very near France) did indeed had some, likely from a German importer/wholesaler: they were maybe 20 in the tanks, looking healthy without much aggression marks (good surprise), but quite small, let's say subadults...
The bad surprise was that the sex ratio was skewed, about 20 males but only 2 females. I picked the 2 females, and the biggest male I found. Hope it's really females, not juvenile, they are small so it's always possible...
Could have picked a 2nd male but I really want to have more females in the group to lessen aggression, so new plan is to pick again a male and 2 females from another LFS, that should get some this week. Hopefully they will be bigger,but they likely come from the same importer so probably will be the same wrt size and sex ratio...
Well, maybe the wholesaler can somehow sort the imported batch to dispacth differently to different shops, I don' know....but it seems unlikely, at least for uncommon and small imports....

Pics should be coming, once my group is complete...
Edit: my 2 females and my male...better pics should come soon, with new puffers hopefully: my other lfs got some, but only 6 of them, quite small too...hopefully there is at least a female in the bunch, maybe two...

I just got a female irrubesco from my LFS, and they made it sound like their wholesaler's irrubescos were skewed males, too. Hopefully that means suppliers in Southeast Asia are holding back females in the hopes of getting captive breeding populations going?

Maybe, but I would not draw conclusions too quickly: in another shop, they got only females. And a third shop, very close to my home, got a bunch with equal sex ratio, so i am not sure the wholesaler got unbalanced sex, just that they got smaller than usual fishes, because everywhere they are small....
I still want to add one male, possibly 1 addional female too...but the irrubescos in the nearby shop do not look health (even if some females are bigger than the ones I found elsewhere). Surfing the bottom glass, somehting I have never seen before. And they sell them 50% more expensive...Not really a problem for a fish or two, but I do not want to take the chance, introduce sick fish in my group is not a good idea.
I mention this shop because they seldom had any puffer before (and can clearly not take good care of them - they gave them flake food!), so I guess there is a large batch of small fish that got imported, and wholesaler looks eager to get rid of them. Skewed sex ratio can be explained like that too: if they are not carefull and quickly sort by size, sending bigger fishes to some shops, skewed M/F will happen. If they know the usual end-of-year shipping of bigger fish is coming, it would make a lot of sense to get rid of this batch fast...but only an insider could tell

A group picture. I have now 4 females and 2 males, which seems to work quite well, at least for now, when one male and 2 females are still really young. Paradoxically, introducing the last male has reduced chasing compared to when I had one male for 4 females...hopefully this will stay the same when all are fully grown, and maybe I will have some reproduction...

Very cool! How large is their tank?

in cm 120*70, 42 deep. 350l, about 90 gal I think...The pic is through the "small" 70cm side
It's more like reef tanks, with a large footprint and relatively shallow, and visible from all sides.
Also have a very high canopy (with glass windows), even if it's not open it's more of a riparium than a regular tank, with plenty of space for emergent plants....

Here is a pic of the whole tank and canopy from the 120cm side...