The Puffer Forum

Hello!

Need help with my puffers. I've got 2 pygmy puffers and 2 red eyed/tailed puffers. The pygmy puffers are happy, feeding well, being nosey and generally puffer like (had them for about a month, tank has been matured and running for over a year just fancied a change of fish).
The red ones are my concern, I was told when I bought them that they are slighty aggressive but in the size tank I've got should be fine and fingers crossed so far so good! However they seem not to be feeding and after reading some of the posts I think I know why, are they more noctunal? If so when do I feed? The pygmy puffers munch away on thier food happily when the light is on but red ones seem to hide! Can't really see if the red ones are eating at all, starting to worry about them.
Only had the red ones for a week and have notice a huge change in the amount of waste already, so I am assuming they are feeding on any left over food I can't fish out, but not sure!
Also the pygmys have wiped out my snail population, any suggesstions on alternitives?

THe main question is how big a tank they are in, there has been some sucess mixing DPs and red eyes, but only with LOTS of space for the red eyes, 10-15 gallons per fish, on top of 5 per DP, and only with good natured red eyes.

Red eyes are vicious little things, you'd better keep an eye on them as they settle in.

Are they skinny? Or do they have round bellies?

Thank you for comments.

They have plenty of room, it's a 50lt (UK) tank and they are only small still. The red ones are separating off the tank between themselves and seem to have divided it in half each with the DPs having the middle, i've got plenty of hiding places for them too. They seem perfectly happy and active just worried as I've not seen them feed! Both the reds are female, does this make a difference to agressiveness?
No sign of any illness or round or hollow bellies.

50 liters is only 13 US gallons, which is large enough for ONE SINGLE red eye.

They are way too cramped, or will be in a very short time! They will be stunted, have health problems and likely die early from being in too small of a tank. Even though they are babies now, puffers grow very fast and any stunting will harm them for life. They are unbelievably sensitive to stress and bad water conditions, and cramping them guarentees both will happen, if they are not already (and by the fact that they aren't eating, I would say its happening already).

If their bellies aren't round and they aren't hollow, what are they? Can you get a photo? They should be nicely rounded if they are eating well.

Your first goal should be to separate the two species, giving them the room they need. Your current tank would be good for the dwarf puffers, and you could probably add one or two more. For the two red eyes, you'd probably need 20-30 gallons if you want to keep the two together, with no other fish.

In the mean time, you need to keep that water as clean as possible to keep stress levels low. Do you know what your nitrates are at? That will tell you a lot.

Bellies aren't round from illness is what I meant. Don't know if they are feeding which was the whole point of asking questions.

Problem solved now anyway. Both are feeding well and happy. Had different LFS come to house and ID the fish, they are a diffferent speices than I thought and are fully grown and mature so size of tank is fine thank you.

For your peace of mind Nitrates <5, nitrites <5, ammonia 0, pH 7.3

What species did they ID them as?

If you have any nitrites the tank is still cycling and you'll need to be doing a lot of water changes to keep the fish healthy in the mean time.

What species did they turn out to be? Red eye, red tail puffers are probably the second smallest species so if they are not that, and they are not dwarves, they'll probably get even larger and you'll be even more overstocked.

LFS ID as "red bellied puffers" which I'd never heard of!

The fella that came has kept them himself and gave me loads of info on habitat and feeding ect so I have a buddy I can call if I need any more help.

I use Nutrafin test kits which use a colouring system to read results, all mine are clear but lowest reading they have is a sort of tinge of colour which would be the results I gave above. So no my tank is not still cycling. Which my little helper also confirmed.

Can you get a picture so we can try to tell you exactly what you have. Very few LFSes can correctly identify puffers.

Still sound like a carinotetraodon species to me. Irrubesco males can have red bellies, not as permanently prominent as some of the other carinotetraodons, but its possible.