The Puffer Forum

Hi there,

I have had 3 healthy GSPs for more than a year now, alone in their BW tank.
I would be interested in breeding them. Some years ago I saw a web page by a hobbyist in Germany (the text was in German) that documented a precise protocol for breeding GSPs but the page has gone now. It involved many many complicated steps aiming at reproducing the changes in habitat that occur in south-east Asia mangroves when the monsoon arrives: lots of rainwater lowers the temperature and the salinity, light also changes, etc.. all in a very progressive manner. Another hobbyist from Japan also had a very nice page with lots of photos describing how he managed to breed dwarf puffers but they seem keener than GSPs ! And live in very different habitats (the page is also gone).

The few indications I found more recently on breeding GSPs in pufferfish related web-sites seem rather non-specific (and probably just copy/paste each other?)

I was wondering if anyone had ever managed, intentionally or not, to breed GSPs? Obviously to do this one would first need to differentiate males from females. Anybody has any tips?

Thanks a lot

Auguste

I didn't think you COULD breed GSPs in aquariums???

Puffer breeding is a pretty rare occurence for the most part. I've never heard of GSPs being bred, but the varying conditions you mention sound like a likely trigger.

Dwarfs are probably the most commonly bred in captivity and will often do so on their own provided excellent conditions. One of our mods actually had dwarf puffer fry recently.

These GSPs sound like a good breeding project for when I start fishy college next year!

Could be a great research topic. Lord knows we need more research done in this area.

Whenever I happen into a large sum of money, i'm going to try and breed GSPs.

I could have sworn I've seen this article too.

As far as telling male from female, I have no idea. Maybe it has soemthing to do with the black underbelly coloring? I know some GSPs have pure white underbellys, while others have a constant gray/black underbelly.


Just some speculation...

I thought there were no external differences?
hehe you could always bung a few in a 1000g tank and replicate seasonal conditions as much as possible and see what happens!!! (when I'm a miwyonaire i might)

GSPs are not sexually dimorphic, so there's no way to tell the two apart just by looking at them normally.

Dinsdale wrote:GSPs are not sexually dimorphic, so there's no way to tell the two apart just by looking at them normally.

I am aware of this, I was just speculating.

GSPs have spawned more than once in aquaria, but I am unaware of successful rearing of fry. Apparently they have similar requirements to marine fish for various rotifers of the correct size for various growth stages Did the German site mention fry rearing? That would be great info.

Hey, if anyone knows, ^--- This man does...

Much respect RTR!

RTR wrote:GSPs have spawned more than once in aquaria, but I am unaware of successful rearing of fry. Apparently they have similar requirements to marine fish for various rotifers of the correct size for various growth stages Did the German site mention fry rearing? That would be great info.

hmmmm, I thought I had read of a few breedings somewhere.

Thanks for all your replies. I actually have a friend scientist who works at the french genome center where they sequenced (read) the entire DNA of the GSP (Tetraodon nigroviridis). Here are a few infos on the project:

http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/externe/Eng ... sme_C.html

There are only a handfull of fish that have had their genome sequenced (the japanese Fugu is one, the medaka, the zebrafish and the three spine stickleback are well under way and should be released soon). The french group (in collaboration with a US group) published their work in Nature (a big scientific magazine) two years ago and they "made the cover" of that issue with a nice "Andy Warhol" like design with colorful Tetraodons:


If you want to read the article it's a bit dense but here's the link to the PDF file:
http://robore.free.fr/tetraodon/Jaillon_2004.pdf

In short, they used the genome sequence to prove than the ancestor of modern fish had a "genome doubling", something that up to then was quite controversial, and then moved on to reconstruct a rough version of what that ancestor's genome was before the doubling event, some 400 million years ago. It's a bit like traveling back in time using DNA fingerprints.

But back to the breeding question. The scientists were also interested to breed the Tetraodons because buying them from LFS was unreliable and one could not make sure of their geographical origin, there was also a confusion between the nigroviridis and the fluviatilis genus so they wanted a stable and reliable source for the fish and thought of establishing a breeding tank. First they asked some colleagues to check if the fish were sexually mature, i.e. if they were ready to reproduce of if they were too young. So these colleagues had a look inside a few males and females (they could only tell males from females by looking at their sexual organs) and saw that ovaries and testes contained eggs and spermatozoids respectively). So that was good news, the fish seemed only to require a "trigger" as Phaedrus said. Unfortunately once the genome was sequenced and analysed they moved on to other things and never pursued the task to its end.

Also I guess that because GSPs can be bought quite cheaply from imported sources there's never been a real incentive for a company to start breeding them for the aquaria trade.

So I will have a go and see what happens. It might take years though!

Auguste
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Be sure to write everything down & keep us informed of things. It would be wonderful to slow down the depletion of the natural supply of these fish.

Very cool articles. Thanks for posting them. Hopefully we'll see some successful rearings in the near future.