The Puffer Forum

I was just wondering why you wouldn't be able to keep two peaceful kinds of puffers together when you can keep peaceful puffers together with other peaceful non pufferfish

Please don't get angry with me, it is only a question

No one will get angry. There aren't any peaceful kinds of puffers. There are very aggressive and less aggressive. SAPs are the least aggressive and often do well with others (of their own kind and other species), but sometimes they don't. Very few puffers can be kept with conspecifics, much less with other species.

Agreed, there is no such thing as a "peaceful" puffer. Just one that hasn't taken a bit out of your fish... yet.

Figure Eights and SAPs usually tolerate con-specifics, but you could not mix the two because they require different water conditions. My pair of Figure Eights tolerate some non-puffer tankmates as well, and I think they are probably better suited for a mixed tank than most puffers. My DPs are also rather non-aggressive to non-puffer tankmates, so far very good with my tiniest of molly fry, though I'm sure that is not typical. I think I read a thread about someone having SAPs and DPs together, though I don't know what the long-term results were.

Of all species there is quite a bit of variation in temperament. I have two very 'docile' Figure Eights that rarely have spats with one another or with tankmates, but I also returned a Figure Eight I had quarantined for a month because when I added him to the display tank he did nothing but attack my other Figure Eight. That shows how you never know what you're going to get, and even if you do get a puffer that isn't very aggressive it can change with time. So, having more than one puffer can potentially increase the odds for problems.

A GSP and a Ceylon may tolerate one another long term if you kept them together as juveniles and in a large tank (70-80 gallons).

Even my mellow F8s have eaten all the BBGs in with them.

I've read mixed results with F8s and BBGs. Mine has survived for quite some time now.

SAPS and DP's together could be a possibility as well as SAP's and Irrubesco. They've both been done before with mixed results. All depends on the personality of the puffers you get.

Hilly wrote:All depends on the personality of the puffers you get.

Yes. I've heard about someone trying to combine DPs and SAPs, and the DPs bullied the SAPs a lot!

I have a pair of irrubescos and a pair of lortetis, and both the pairs do very fine...for now. The irrubesco pair even sleeps together. But I guess it has to do with them still being very small.

But I have to agree with Boxermom and PP: There's no such thing as a peaceful puffer. Give them a little shrimp, and you will see what we mean

I had three DPs (who only survived for a week or two after I bought them. They weren't well). In lack of a cycled tank, I had to put them in an "apartment" in the tank of my irrubescos. All though the irrubesco male couldn't get to them, he could see them. And he was constantly staying outside the DP's "apartment", in hope of getting the chance to beat them up (or kill them - who knows what's going on inside a puffer's mind).

What I meant by peaceful puffer was the least agressive of all of the puffers

I kept SAPs & DPs together & the SAPs had bite marks on them from the DPs. Lortetis & irrubescos are best kept in pairs but my female lorteti killed her mate, after spawing with him 3x. So, you just never know when they'll kill each other. It's always a risk.