Green Spotted Puffer

[guitarpik]

Hey everyone, brand new to this board...just had a few questions about this fish.

I just came home from college and realized I had a 10g tank sitting in my closet so I set it up. I was at Wal-Mart the other day and realized they sold fish so I checked them out. After being disgusted by the care (or lack of) that they give to their fish, I decided to rescue one, so I bought a GSP.

I came home and started researching and realized this fish requires a lot more attention than I thought. So I went to my LFS the next day and bought frozen krill and bloodworms. He takes the krill in his mouth and then spits it out, but he loves the bloodworms.

My main question right now is, roughly how many blood worms should I feed him at a time, and how often should I feed? I would say hes about 2 inches.

Right now I don't want to put anything else in the tank with him. If I upgraded to a 55 gallon tank, would I be able to keep other fish with him or would I need a 120?

Well that should do it for now.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Boxermom]

Its very likely you wouldn't be able to keep anything with him, no matter how big the tank. It depends on his personality, but puffers get more aggressive with age. GSPs require 30g minimum, a 55g would be perfect for him alone. Feed enough for his tummy to be slightly rounded but no more. It's stomach shouldn't bulge. At that size, once a day or once every other day is fine for feeding.

 

[nmonks]

My South American puffers and irrubesco puffers aren't wild about krill. But it is good for them. What I tend to do is give them krill for breakfast, when they're nice and hungry, and they eat it. If I offer them krill alongside, or after, something more yummy, like bloodworms, they ignore it.

As Boxermom says, there are some good resources for pufferfish people elsewhere on the web. One thing to do is check whether you actually have Tetraodon nigroviridis or Tetraodon fluviatilis. Both are called GSPs, though pufferfish purists prefer to use GSP for Tetraodon nigroviridis, and topaz puffer for Tetraodon fluviatilis. In reality, retailers make no attempt to keep the names separate, so you have to ID the fish yourself. They can be extremely difficult to distinguish, but generally Tetraodon nigroviridis is bright green with small, evenly spaced black spots, while Tetraodon fluviatilis is muddy green with a blotchy pattern of spots tending towards that seen on a figure-8 puffer.

Tetraodon fluviatilis is marginally more peaceful than Tetraodon nigroviridis, and thus a better bet if you want to mix it with stuff. In practise, neither is a good community fish in the sense of being reliably peaceful. Some people get "nice" fish, others "nasty" ones. So keeping two together in a 55 gallon tank, while possible, is a gamble.

Neither species is difficult to keep. They don't really care either way about salinity, and anything from 50-100% seawater is adequate. A high pH and hardness is more important, and like all pufferfish they don't like "old" water or low oxygen levels: in other words, do regular water changes, and provide plenty of aeration (of turbulence from the filter).

People have combined them with green chromides, scats, monos, etc., but this is chancey. At the London Aquarium you will see GSPs with these sorts of fish, seemingly living together just fine. But enough people have had bad experienced (fin-nipping, predation, outright aggression) to make this something to be approached with caution.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[Boxermom]

How very sad that someone is so terrified of people possibly getting information somewhere else that they'll delete a link to an article about a specific fish. It wasn't even to a competing forum, but was to AN ARTICLE ABOUT CARE OF A SPECIFIC FISH. Pretty pathetic and childish, imo.

 

[nmonks]

Boxermom --

Whether or not the link is a good source of information, there are specific rules here about not linking to other forums. There in the terms and conditions you sign up to when you join. I'm not sure the reasons behind this rule, but if you do a search on the in the Board Announcements section, e.g. here, you'll see the topic has been discussed ad nauseum.

Since I contribute to other forums, I also understand your annoyance, but I can also understand why the owners of this forum don't want visitors to be siphoned off to others.

Cheers,

Neale

How very sad that someone is so terrified of people possibly getting information somewhere else that they'll delete a link to an article about a specific fish. It wasn't even to a competing forum, but was to AN ARTICLE ABOUT CARE OF A SPECIFIC FISH. Pretty pathetic and childish, imo.

 

[Boxermom]

I can understand not wanting links to competing websites, but to prohibit links to informational care sheets is ridiculous. We should be more interested in giving vital info, not censoring info just because its located elsewhere.

 

[AMS]

I can understand not wanting links to competing websites, but to prohibit links to informational care sheets is ridiculous. We should be more interested in giving vital info, not censoring info just because its located elsewhere.

I can see where you are coming from, but rules are rules and you did agree to them when you activated your account on TFF. Personally, I feel as though there are members on TFF that are very knowledgable on GSP's and their husbandry, members can get all their questions answered here without the need of caresheets from different forums.

 

[Boxermom]

Then they need to reword the agreement, because the agreement that I agreed to when I joined said no advertising of commercial or competing websites, not no posting of any information available somewhere else. What I posted was neither commercial, nor was it advertising a competing website.

 

[AMS]

Then they need to reword the agreement, because the agreement that I agreed to when I joined said no advertising of commercial or competing websites, not no posting of any information available somewhere else. What I posted was neither commercial, nor was it advertising a competing website.

Since nor you or I are not moderators, I guess we do not have the final say on what is "competition". What you may think is not competition, William may. If a moderator deleted a link to a website or forum, it would have been viewed as competition to a moderator/admin, who ultimately have the final say.

 

[phlawed]

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=150985 i have made this guide to help people like you. If you have any questions or want to see my GSP please the reply or pm me and i will send you anything I know or ask if i dont.

Its very likely you wouldn't be able to keep anything with him, no matter how big the tank. It depends on his personality, but puffers get more aggressive with age. GSPs require 30g minimum, a 55g would be perfect for him alone. Feed enough for his tummy to be slightly rounded but no more. It's stomach shouldn't bulge. At that size, once a day or once every other day is fine for feeding.

This is crap....their stomach can bulge as much as it wants to. My puffer bulges his stomach before even eating. he stops when he is full. Dont be scared if you have a young puffer and it looks pregnant. its not its just eating.

 

[DiscusKeeper403]

cool i luv GSP i have one myself! yeah id suggest adding some salt in there if you havent already...not the amount of salt you need for a real salt water tank...also i havent read the rest of this fourm so forgive me if this info has already been given to you...Puffers teeth actually grow so it is good too get some snails (not sure exact type) i noe there small pond snails and have a brown shell. about the size of your pinky nail if not smaller...anywayz this will help the puffer shread his teeth down so they dont grow too big and end forceing his motuh open 24/7 which will stop him from being able to eat...if you wanted to get a smaller tank 1 GSP would do fine in a 20-30 gallon tank...

 

[nmonks]

Whoa -- calling other people's advice "crap" just isn't cool.

In fact, I'd say you were both right. The tricky bit is that what a pufferfish is programmed to do isn't always what's ideal in captivity. Pufferfish have evolved to eat low-grade food, that is, food with a lot of indigestible matter. Stuff like shrimps, crabs, snails, and clams. Each mouthful has a lot of shell. So where a guppy eats a bloodworm that's 90% digestible, a pufferfish might get a shrimp that's only 50% digestible. To compensate for this, they have to eat more food than other fish of a similar size, and their instinct is to fill themselves up.

This is fine in the wild, but in aquaria we give them much better quality food. If the fill themselves up as they'd like to, they take in twice as much food as they actually need. Eating too much is both a waste of money and potentially harmful. Too much protein in their diet results in an extra load on the filter, which raises nitrates, and these harm pufferfish over the long term.

As phlawed says, these fish are adapted to eat a large amount at once, and it probably doesn't do the fish any harm directly. But like Boxermom says, that's more food than they really need, and since polluting the aquarium water is an issue, there's no point overfeeding a pufferfish. My pufferfish get fed once per day, and I alternate between something easy (bloodworms) and something shelly (krill). Snails are in the tanks for "snacking", though my South American puffers don't really care for snails all that much.

As aquarists, we should remember that we overfeed ourselves a lot of the time, so our "instinct" for judging healthy fish-size portions isn't likely to be terribly accurate. The old doctor's advice that you should always leave the table still wanting more is very sound: if your fish are satiated at feeding time, you've likely given them too much. If they're still eager for more, but obviously not skinny, then you've probably fed them just the right amount.

Cheers,

Neale

eed enough for his tummy to be slightly rounded but no more. It's stomach shouldn't bulge. At that size, once a day or once every other day is fine for feeding.

This is crap....their stomach can bulge as much as it wants to. My puffer bulges his stomach before even eating. he stops when he is full. Dont be scared if you have a young puffer and it looks pregnant. its not its just eating.