The Puffer Forum

Its a trade in at my LFS (they have several different puffers traded in recently) and is listed just as a red eye puffer.

http://bestfish.com/fish/redeyep.jpg

IMO rather a turgidus. I think M. cochinchinensis has a larger ocellus.

Tetraodon turgidus (female)

Female? Please elaborate Sean?

What about the red on the tail, any comments on that? Otherwise, it looks a lot like Bubba.

Oh and *cough* *cough*

What else was traded in?

Three of these little fellas, a ginormous (relatively speaking) "Golden" puffer aka modestus, an absolutely adorable arrowhead (labeled as a longnose puffer) that it took all my willpower not to get, and a bunch of other non-puffers. If you go, when you walk in the door, they're in a large tank just to the left of the door, directly across from the cash register facing the door.

Oh, and they also got a fugu that's about 2ish inches long. Poor little guy was terrified when people started wandering around and dove into the substrate! The three target puffers were hiding under rocks, one of the little guys was almost pitch black and all you could see was his eyeball through a hole in the rock. The modestus was hanging out above the filter piping, and the suvatti kept coming out to see everyone then diving back behind a rock.

Awww, poor little buggars.

I keep eyeing up that 48 bowfront on the Wi reef classifieds... Would be perfect for a ceylon...

There's this posting on craigslist. http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/pet/273309534.html

Oh too funny, they used it as a wine rack!

The other one is cheaper and I hate fluval cannisters..

Now the interesting thing is that these guys don't have a "target" spot, at least not one that sticks out. The spots look to be close to the same size, evenly spaced out. If it weren't for the red eyes and the red splash at the tip of the tail, it would look like a very dark yellow GSP, although the darkness might have been from the stress.

Can it be a target puffer without a target?

and that's where it gets tricky.. just what classifies as a "spot".

It does look just like bubba other than that red on the tail. I have no idea what that is all about.

Upon closer examination, there are three spots sort of in a row that are marginally bigger than the others, each bigger than the last, going in a straight line from the end of the tail area to the mid section sorta. Hard to explain. But none is anything I'd describe as a target and they're all blackish. The red on the tail is definitely natural coloration, not damage or anything like that.

Ok, is it possible that this is a Tetraodon duboisi? The pictures in the PufferPedia aren't quite as yellow (although the first photo is a little more yellow than the second) but have the same freckled coloration, lack of distinct target, and has the red eyes and the red edge on the tail. Not that I would mind if its a turgidus, but its the red on the tail that's throwing me off as well as the lack of target. As he's settled in, the spots are reticulated more like that of giraffe.

No T. duboisi IMO. Their body shape reminds very much to T. miurus.

turgidus does not need to have a target (target group is more an informally used term for the leiurus-group). turgidus often has reticulated spots, compare Wolands specimen (think it was named frog).

Anyone else? I'm still not convinced either way. The photos I've seen of various duboisi show torpedo body shapes similar to the turgidus as well. Only one photo appears to have a similar body shape to the miurius. And from the various descriptions I've read, turgidus arent known to have red coloration on the tail.