South American Puffers

[Fish00]

Common name/s: South american puffer, Colomesus puffer, assel puffer

Scientific name: Colomesus asellus

Family: Tetradon (four tooth)

Origin:Amazon basin

Maximum size:
15cm or 6" usually 10cm 4"

Care:Although I do not recomend them for beginer they make a perfect addition to the aquarium & are full of character & personality & will be a long lived aquarium favorate.Their teeth require trimming every 4-6 months.

Feeding:
worms & crustations, As a member of the tetradon genus they requre ocasional molusc or two to keep thier teeth trimed or you may be cutting them every 4-6 months.

Breeding:
Not yet achived in captivity.

Comments:
Posibly the most peacefull puffer or at least freshwater puffer
it will quite happil live in a large robust comunity requiring 10(u.s) gallons or 40 liters each you must make sure you have room for them.

 

[jflowers]

Care:Although I do not recomend them for beginer they make a perfect addition to the aquarium & are full of character & personality & will be a long lived aquarium favorate.Their teeth require trimming every 4-6 months.

Certainly not a begginer fish, see below. They are fantastic fish, but a species only tank is the only way to be sure other fish will not be harmed. All puffers are fin nippers at best, most are fish killers! SAP's fall into the category of fin nippers, though eyes are also on the menu. (SirMinion's pic of bare guts on his rosy barb would be good here)

Feeding:
worms & crustations, As a member of the tetradon genus they requre ocasional molusc or two to keep thier teeth trimed or you may be cutting them every 4-6 months.

With SAP's, a daily supply of snails will only delay the day you need to trim thier teeth. If you have a VET that has done it before, or are confident and have the resources and nerves to do it yourself, go for it, I had three and they are great fish. I now only have two, one did not make it through the process. No snails and they will need trimming every 3-6 months, lots of snails and they will need trimming every 6+ months.

I recently watched Amazon Abyss on BBC1 and they netted several SAP's, first thing I noticed was that I could not see thier goofy teeth, love to know how they deal with that in the wild, anyone?

Comments:
Posibly the most peacefull puffer or at least freshwater puffer
it will quite happil live in a large robust comunity requiring 10(u.s) gallons or 40 liters each you must make sure you have room for them.

Ok, the most peaceful puffer, hmmmmmm, puffers are not peaceful, they look like cute puppy dogs, that is thier downfall. You get the cute puppy dog home and find that its a fully grown pitbull.

What I think Fish00 was saying is that, compared to others (other puffers), SAP's are peaceful, compared to a neon, nope not peaceful, compared to a moray eel or stonefish, yep peaceful.

Jon

 

[Puffer_freak]

I recently watched Amazon Abyss on BBC1 and they netted several SAP's, first thing I noticed was that I could not see thier goofy teeth, love to know how they deal with that in the wild, anyone?

It's probably to do with a very specialised diet, if someonecould go out and observe their diet in the wild and how often they eat etc, then it might prevent quite so many fish fatalities.

 

[EvilBoris]

My Spotted puffer gnaws on the small rocks of ceramic filter medium that I put in the bottom of my tank. They were from my old Bi-orb and I used them to hold down some plants