Monster Puffer

[ntrueman]

Well today’s routine visit to the LFS for some food and plants took a slight twist, there are two maidenhead aquatic stores in the town and I only ever use one purely for convenience. For some reason today I headed out to the second store to see what they had on offer, it was pretty much the same selection of fish, plants and hardware etc but I came across this monster in the display case and had to take a snap!!

I've not seen a puffer quite this large before, to be honest the pictures do not do it justice at all but it was a good 45cm long! What amazed me the most was how it seemed to just drag its tail along with it but not use it! Anyway I’ll let the pictures do the talking!

 

[Assaye]

I could be wrong but if lookes like a mbu puffer. These guys get to about 2 foot long and need something like a 300-400 gallon tank to house them.

Awesome fish but pretty specialist! Most lfs won't be able to give you the right info on them and often house them in inappropriate environments.

 

[AinsyC]

WOW! i've dont really know that much about puffers, but that sure is huge!

 

[nmonks]

Indeed, is Tetraodon mbu. Specimens can "live" after a fashion in 400 gallons, but more recent estimates of the space they need to thrive put their minimum aquarium size at 1000 gallons. Almost nobody has that kind of space at home, so the market for these monsters is minimal. Most of the specimens you see in pet shops -- and here in England they're far from uncommon -- end up prematurely dead for one reason or another.

Surprisingly, this chap is not the biggest pufferfish; that honour goes to Arothron stellatus, a species believed to reach a maximum length of 120 cm, about 4 feet!

Cheers, Neale

I could be wrong but if lookes like a mbu puffer. These guys get to about 2 foot long and need something like a 300-400 gallon tank to house them.