Green Spotted Puffers

[Leahzebelle]

A few weeks ago i got two green spotted puffers at walmart. i was a total idiot about it and figured that they had to be freshwater because walmart kept them in freshwater (possibly one of the stupidest ideas i have ever had >_>). All it said on the sign was "pufferfish". i got home and really started to think about their long term health. i ended up identifying them properly and realizing that they had to have brackish water. I had a five gallon empty hex tank that i figured would suffice until i could get a ten gallon ready. so i got the five gallon all set up and then realized that the filter wasnt working. so i decided to clear out one of my two ten gallons, put the corys and frogs into the other ten gallon, and add table salt (haha j/k, i had marine salt from my hermit crabs in my closet ) to it and mix it up as best as i could and hope everything worked out all right. so right now they are both in a ten gallon tank. i know i need to get a bigger one, they are still pretty small right now so i think it will be ok for the time being. they get along just fine as far as i can tell. no nipped fins etc. so i put a few ghost shrimp in with them and threw in a few shrimp pellets and pieces of algae wafers for them to have. so far i THINK that one of them has eaten one ghosty, but im not sure. i got more today at petco, along with two live plants, a hydrometer, another marine salt packet, frozen brine shrimp, meal worms.....i think thats it. Oh! i got around fifty regular pest snails, and few malaysian trumpets, along with something else i will go and identify after im done here. i just asked the employee at petco to give me a bunch and she ended up clearing out a whole tank for me. o.o which was nice because i had tried to breed them in my other ten gallon a few times before with only two snails but it didnt work. i had one malaysian trumpet snail in the ten gallon when i put the salt in, it died within a week. the puffs didnt seem to show an interest in him. the hydrometer says 1.006, give or take a number or two. now ill move onto the feeding problems. the nearest REAL pet store is over an hour away, just today i finally got to the petco and got some meal worms. but before that i had to get wax worms from a bait shop near here, thats all they had besides leeches and earth worms. o.o and i dont think i should give them either... how many times a day should i feed them? i have been giving them each one worm when their stomachs start to get pretty small, which is about two to three times a day. the worms arent that big, but they are big enough to fill their little tummys sufficiently i think. am i overfeeding? ive heard a lot of different stuff on how many times to feed them per week, or day. and one last question, are there any plants that are poisonous to them? i got what i think is an amazon sword plant today at petco.....and i dont think it will live that long in the brackish tank but i heard that they like to tear apart aquarium plants so i figured i could shove a plant in and let them have fun for a bit before it dies?

Pictures!!! * i just realized how skinny they were when i got them.... *
This one is the more easy going one, less shy, but stilll shy mind you, then the other one, it was easier to get pics of him.

This is both of them. i was worried that the darker one was sick, he wasnt eating the wax worms like the other one, he barely took a nibble for days on end. he has started to eat better now, and his color is increasing to a more green like the other one. but still shy. he also doesnt come up to the top when i drop food in for them. oh and they seem to not wannt to eat unless the food is sinking, or has sunk to the bottom. its impossible to get them to pay attention to food floating on the top, even if it is moving. i have to shove it down and squish it a little bit so it sinks slowly and then they eat it. can i just leave them float and they learn to eat it from the surface or dont eat it at all?

This one is the lighter one im pretty sure. im going to name him Green, and the darker one Bean. o.o

 

[Marine/Freshwater?]

Sorry your puffs are toast, the pictures indacate ringworms. No good treatment. GSPS are notoriuos for that. Reaally hard to get a healthy green spotted puffer. Dark belly with black rings = death. You also should only keep one puff per tank. If you could fluctuate thier salinity without killing them that could save them.(5% chance) You be lucky if they last 6 months. Your doing your best though. Green Spotted Puffers are worhtless compared to Figure eights. Retailers treat Green Spotted Puffers very poorly. They can do okay in high end brackish and saltwater though.

 

[Lhutch]

Upgrade your tank immediatly,you need atleast 30gallons for one,you can put 2 in a 55gal,as for swords they tolerate less then 1.003 otherwise thell die and create ammonia,upgrade your tank immediatly,buy some bio spira and instantly cycle that filter and plop them in,other than that they look very nice

 

[Leahzebelle]

Green Spotted Puffers are worhtless compared to Figure eights.

That is your opinion, not mine. i have been enjoying them very much, they have sweet personalities and are very adorable.

 

[Lhutch]

upgrade or your gonna stunt them!

 

[Leahzebelle]

fine ill upgrade ill upgrade! unfortunately i cant do it this very moment, im so sorry.

 

[Dave Legacy]

Dark belly with black rings = death.

I'm calling BS on you, homie. Your post has to be one of the worst posts I've seen in a long time. At least some of what you said was helpful, but everything else was plain idiocy and unnecessary. The dark coloration is often times nothing more than a indication of stress which could in fact lead to death. I wouldn't jump the gun and call it parasites, especially considering the unsatisfactory living conditions and being housed in a group.

 

[Deep Freeze]

Dave Legacy, I couldn't have possibly said that better. It is indeed just a stress mark that will come and go. On another note, malaysian trumpets are not puffer food material, their shells are so hard that there is a chance that your puffers teeth could be broken trying to eat one. Its best to just stick to feeding them ramshorns and pond snails.

 

[ac106]

upgrade or your gonna stunt them!

dont get hysterical. She isnt going to stunt anything.While they need bigger tanks eventually, if they are as small as she says, they will be fine for now.

Dave Legacy, I couldn't have possibly said that better. It is indeed just a stress mark that will come and go. On another note, malaysian trumpets are not puffer food material, their shells are so hard that there is a chance that your puffers teeth could be broken trying to eat one. Its best to just stick to feeding them ramshorns and pond snails.

I always see this stated on TFF but have never seen anyone post first hand that it happened to them. I feed both my GSP trumpets and have done so for years. No broken beaks yet.

 

[Leahzebelle]

Thanks so much guys! Just now i gave them a little bit of the frozen brine shrimp and the brighter one went mad over them, it took the darker guy a little longer to come out of his cave to see what was going on, but he ended up eating a good amount as well. And i just figured out that the lady at the petstore gave me one ramshorn snail, the rest were regular pond snails. now i know what to call them, hehe. i put a few pond snails in there, stuck them to the glass and they didnt show any kind of interest in them, but i cant find them now so they might have eaten them last night. i need to see if i can get more ramshorns.

 

[DarkEntity]

I was reading some of the posts thinking omg...could there be any more rubbish posted then thankfully Dave and the ones after sorted it out.

Yes they will require a much larger tank as they get older, and will require the SG raising to full marine but as they are only small (by the looks of things) they will be fine for a while. Just be ready for their potential size of about 6+" in length not including their tails.

I wouldnt recommend feeding them Trumpet snails, as it "can" damage beaks, i would more recmommend you look at Ramshorns or Pond Snails.

As mentioned Puffer colours change with happyness, stress, when feeding, and when playing etc. Dark belly can also be from the substrate colour so dont worry too much, let them settle in, keep an eye on the water quality etc, and get the water stable at a mid level SG 1.010 or there abouts.

Most of all, enjoy them, Puffers will get really interactive with a keeper that interacts with them.

 

[Leahzebelle]

I was reading some of the posts thinking omg...could there be any more rubbish posted then thankfully Dave and the ones after sorted it out.

Yes they will require a much larger tank as they get older, and will require the SG raising to full marine but as they are only small (by the looks of things) they will be fine for a while. Just be ready for their potential size of about 6+" in length not including their tails.

I wouldnt recommend feeding them Trumpet snails, as it "can" damage beaks, i would more recmommend you look at Ramshorns or Pond Snails.

As mentioned Puffer colours change with happyness, stress, when feeding, and when playing etc. Dark belly can also be from the substrate colour so dont worry too much, let them settle in, keep an eye on the water quality etc, and get the water stable at a mid level SG 1.010 or there abouts.

Most of all, enjoy them, Puffers will get really interactive with a keeper that interacts with them.

Im enjoying them! The more social one sometimes follows my finger up and down the glass, and when he sees me get out the worms he comes right to the front of the tank and stares at me with those big chameleon like eyes. id say they are getting more attention at the moment then my little brother.

 

[Dave Legacy]

I had put my 1.5" GSP in a 37G Tall tank all by herself (her is just a guess of course). Even being in a huge tank, all alone, with dense silk plants, and large piles of lace rock, she still displayed a lot of stress for the first two weeks. This is just my observation, but I feel that puffers require a little more settling in time because they're territoral by nature.