The Puffer Forum

Well it's been a year and all 3 t. ocelatus under my supervision are.... fine.

I have pretty much been convinced that 2 things are required to be successful with these fish. You need to get some in good shape in the first place which is difficult and probably as much luck as anything else. Second point is that you need to maintain them as cool as you can, low to mid 70s. I can see a big difference in behavior when it gets warm, they just go a little strange.

The 2 I have at home have been easy to care for, I maintain the tank at about 1.012 to 1.014 sg and do water changes as needed to maintain nitrate levels below 20ppm. This seems to keep them happy and maintains a good colour on them. I've found that cheato in the tank will help water quality, it doesn't grow as fast as it does in full seawater but it stays healthy. Feeding is pretty simple, krill and prawns are the staple with silversides and formula frozen trigger food once in a blue moon. They will absolutely not touch the pellets my GSPs eat. I haven't tried tank mates with these two, I don't think it'll work. They tolerate each other for the most part, I did have an incident at one point and the smaller fish got it's tail taken off which led to a nasty infection. I got rid of that by putting him in a FW QT and doing SW dips every day for a week. I almost gave the little guy away but a bigger tank helped keep it from happening again. Growth on the bigger of the two has been impressive, about 2.5 x the size he was a year ago, the smaller one hasn't grown much but has filled out quite a bit. They stay quiet during the day moving around mostly at dawn and dusk. They're ability to hunt at night is amazing, they will nail ghost shrimp every time with one lame little moonlight running.

The other fish is the one we keep in a display at the store I still occasionally work at. The tank is high end brackish in the 1.016 range and has an average temp in the mid seventies. This guy is huge, must have gone from one inch to over 6 in a year. He shares the tank with monos, scats, 2 big Colombian sharks and a brackish moray. This tank is setup mangrove root style with mopani driftwood rather than my open water style. I'm not sure if it is the setup, the large tank mates or all the people around but this fish is much more reclusive and spends a lot of time buried. He has been okay with the other fish until recently, apparently he grabbed a mono and dragged it under the sand to eat it last week. May have been an isolated incident but we're keeping an eye on him.

If anyone has any questiosn I'd be glad to help but that pretty mcuh everything I've figured out so far.

Great update- thanks for sharing!

I bet that tank is quite a sight. Any possible pics?

The little buggers are really camera shy but here is a picture of the tank:



And a couple of the larger fish:





These are about 4 months old, the java moss has been replaced with cheato.

I'm a little disappointed with the response to this. I'm not going to try and say that I've managed to solve all the problems with keeping these fish in captivity, there's a good chance that I've been lucky and nothing else.

It would have been nice if some of the people that were so adamant that I was making a mistake and that the store was doing an awful thing by bringing these guys in were willing to say that maybe they were being a bit hasty or unreasonable. I'm not really surprised at the silence but it would have been nice to see some response.

What a gorgeous coloration on them... Those puffers look really good. Good job man.

Thanks for the update & pics. I am really happy that you have kept them alive & healthy this long. It would be great if temp was the trick w/these fellows. I hope you continue to have success with them!

I'm glad to hear they are still around! I also didn't know they buried themselves... very cool pictures. I wonder if the low temperature is one of the important parts of keeping this fish.

The quiet might be partially related to the holiday "weekend" in the US. I just got around to reading this post myself.

That is really cool, and I bet the lack of response is the US holiday weekend.

They're sure pretty fish. Keep us posted - my basement stays pretty cool - upper 60s in the winter and low 70s in the summer...I wonder how they'd do down there?

My LFS got these guys in a couple of time, but they died to fast on them they only get in GSPs and Figure 8s these days since they are able to keep them alive.

Eric

Give people time, it's a holiday!

I too hope that temperature really is the trick here. While a year is certainly a HUGE step in keeping these guys alive in captivity, it is still very short in comparison to an entire lifespan, so I do hope you keep recording your observations. This could really be a great source of information regarding care of these puffers.

Well done.

Great Update - thanks so much for posting it! Please continue to update us on these fish as they mature - wondering if aggression will pick up as they mature or as size differential increases.

Beautiful fish too! Actually nicer specimen than that on cover of Ebert's book. According to Ebert, the max size is 15cm - which is the size (6") that your store specimen attained in a year - so it will be very interesting to see how he develops.

Interesting pic of buried peacock - what is your substrate?

How is tooth growth?

Interesting point CSF.
I really love getting experience-based hobbyist perspectives on things like this.

ChesapeakeSwellfish wrote:Great Update - thanks so much for posting it! Please continue to update us on these fish as they mature - wondering if aggression will pick up as they mature or as size differential increases.

Beautiful fish too! Actually nicer specimen than that on cover of Ebert's book. According to Ebert, the max size is 15cm - which is the size (6") that your store specimen attained in a year - so it will be very interesting to see how he develops.

Interesting pic of buried peacock - what is your substrate?

How is tooth growth?

As far as aggression that' pretty much what I expect to see.

The substrate is playground sand from a company called target. You can get a 55lbs bag from home depot for under $5, it's so clean I don't even wash it before using it. I don't need to worry about buffering as my tap water has a pretty high kH and the pH runs high 7s to low 8s.

Tooth growth hasn't been an issue, I don't go out of my way to provide harder food than hikari krill.

My tanks are in my tank room in the basement. I have to vent the tank room with a small grill and fan in the basement window to keep humidity to a reasonable level, so tank temps seem to hover around 78-80 in the summer. I don't have space or cash for a chiller, so I guess I won't be trying to raise these guys any time soon. It's good to hear that they are thriving under your care though!