Common Names: Dwarf Puffer, Pygmy Puffer, Indian Puffer, Pea Puffer, Malabar Puffer

Scientific Name: Carinotetraodon travancoricus

Family: Tetraodontidae

Origin: Asia

Max Size: 1”

Care: The dwarf puffer does not require any salt in it’s water, it’s a completely freshwater fish. Adding salt will do more harm than good. Small as they are they are extremely aggressive and should be kept in species only tanks. They’ll need a minimum of 5 gallons each and when having more than 1 in a tank this rule should not be stretched to fit slightly more in. The tank should have a sand substrate, seeing as puffers often like to sleep on sand and sometimes even burry themselves in it. Gravel often has sharp edges and will lead to the puffers cutting themselves. When keeping more than 1 puffer the tank it will need to be heavily decorated to break up the eye-sight of the puffers and give them plenty of opportunities to hide from and lose the other puffer that is following them. You can do this by using plants, rocks and bogwood. Dwarfs establish their own territory as well so caves or other hiding places they can call theirs are a must.

Dwarf puffers will also need their teeth looked after. They keep growing and can overgrow if not being grinded down by snail shells. If this happens, the fish will not be able to eat anymore and will eventually starve to death if the teeth don’t get cut. For this reason you’ll have to feed your puffers snails at least once every 2 weeks. The rule for this tends to be "it will get crushed as long as its smaller than the size of the puffers eye", anything larger than that will simply get it’s head bitten off.

Feeding: Best food for main diet is bloodworms, live or frozen. Treats can be provided in the form of black worms, live or frozen brine shrimp (when using the brine shrimp, be sure to rinse them off in freshwater first to minimize the amount of salt that enters the water), live ghost or river shrimp, mysis shrimp or pretty much anything that will fit in their mouths. They are not guaranteed to like all this, so you’ll simply have to find out by trying. Dwarf puffers can be very picky about their food and might even refuse to eat anything that is not alive. You can try fooling them by placing the food in the current and hoping they’ll get to it before it stops moving. They are messy eaters though, and can leave quite a lot of food on the bottom after feeding time. It’s recommended to remove this right away to stop it from polluting the water. Snails make a good treat too, but like said before … will have to be fed on a 2-weekly base. Recommended feedings is once every 2 days and feed until their bellies are nice and rounded.

Sexing: Male dwarf puffers have a black line on their stomach, though I have noticed this fading from time to time. They do however, at all times, have wrinkles behind the eyes which the females are lacking.

Breeding: Only once been recorded properly in an aquarium, so not much known about it.

Comments: You are always taking a risk when having more than 1 dwarf puffer in the same tank, and nothing will guarantee you to have happy puffers that will not kill each other. It’s not recommended to keep more than 1 male in a tank, seeing as they tend to be more aggressive towards each other. Also, young puffers tend to get along together great and sometimes even school! Don’t be fooled though, once they get older their aggression grows and chances of them getting along at all are very slim.

Some people keep otos and bristlenose plecos in with dwarf puffers as a clean-up crew. If this will work depends completely on the personality of the puffer, some manage it, others end up with dead catfish. It might be worth trying as long as you keep a very close eye on it, at all times, and have a place to re-home the catfish into.

Just thought that I'd share some of the breeding pictures of my DPs

Female (left) looking for suitable place to lay eggs and male (right) following behind


Female finds place and stays motionless for a few seconds while male pumps sperm


Eggs (mixture of freshly laid and few-day-old eggs) about 1mm diameter and takes approx. 4 days to hatch


Newly hatched fry



Start hovering and taking food (microworms in this case), about 1 to 2 weeks old


Several weeks down the line