The Puffer Forum

I've been ready to set up a second puffer tank for some time, and have been keeping a watchful eye for something interesting to pop up. The only puffers I've seen for sale locally (like within a 100 mile drive) are GSP's and occasionally Dwarf Puffers. Once I saw a pair of Irrubescos, and once a single Figure 8. So there isn't exactly a wide selection.....

So my interest was piqued when one of the stores brought in a pair of "Red Eye Puffers". I talked to the guy about them, and he said head office ordered 30(!) about 6 months ago, not knowing what they were. A few got sent to each store, but not my local. They haven't been able to sell many of them, and decided to try them in different stores (my local being one of them). They are selling for $5 each, and the guy indicated that I could have them for free if I was keen, just so they could get rid of them!

I looked in the tank today and discovered that there are now 4 fish in there. The smallest is approx 2", and the largest is nearer 4" long. They look pretty lazy, just hiding out in caves or under logs - though this may be because there's 4 of them in a 10gal?

The main colour seems to be a yellowy green, with grey spots. There is a large black ring, with a red blob in the middle just in front of the tail, and sure enough they have bright red eyes. I was thinking they could be fang's, but the spot looks way to big? I'm leaning towards it being an Tetraodon leiurus, though I could be way off.

See what you think. Please excuse the poor quality picture, the LFS said I wasn't allowed to take photos of anything, regardless of the reason - so I had to take a sneaky one!

Mmm, tough to tell. Either T. turgidus or T. cochinchinensis, to my eyes ... It's tough to identify when their colours are so muted. Either way, purely FW, territorial fish, need lots of caves and overhangs and broken sitelines in a large tank if kept together. Aggression may be an issue. See http://www.pufferlist.com for further pics and info.

Red spot by tail means Fang's puffer (T cochinchinesis).

That is T. cochinchinensis

Thanks for the help!

I'm pretty tempted to buy one of these. Will there be any issues with lowering the salinity back to full FW, because at the moment the LFS has them in a "brackish" tank.
Though they don't sell any Instant Ocean or similar, so I suspect they are using Dr Wellfish aquarium salt...

Take you own hydrometer or refractometer with you and check the specific gravity, then match it at home and then bring the density down slowly - the usual 0.002 per week max. If their reading is <1.002 (many store's "BW" is really very lightly salted), then drip acclimitization will do the job in hours rather than weeks.

You might want to check the GH/KH of their water versus yours - are they on the same water supply?

Well I went out this morning and checked their tank. Seems none of the "brackish" tanks are actually salted. So I brought one Fang's home, and it's now sitting in my quarantine tank.

Since taking it out of the LFS (where their 10gal tank now contained 5 puffers) it's colouration has brightened right up. I'll try and get some pictures once it's stopped hiding!

These puffers like to hide. I have a similar species (T turgidus). I keep a flowerpot pointing towards the front of the tank for him to "hide" in, so I can see him.

Yeah I gathered it was a lurker, and have set up a "shipwreck's bell" (posh flowerpot ) facing the front also. Great minds eh?

It has done a bit of exploring which is a good sign - it must know by now it's in a tank by itself. Haven't managed to get it to eat anything yet, though it may do throughout the night (when I'm not looking!)

The only slightly worrying thing so far, is that it seems to have lost, or is losing a layer of slime/skin. Is this normal for any puffer?