Unidentified Fish?

[grayt]

Hi all,
Sorry to be so vague about this but yesterday I happened to find myself at a fish centre some way away from home, they had the usual tropcial selection in there but they had a breed of fish which i have not seen in the shops before. They were marked up on the tank as Texas Cichlid, so I thought before i rush in and get one i should do the responsible thing and go home and check out the fish stats on the net.

So I have had a snoop around on a few web sites and it seems that this particular fish was maked up wrong leaving me wondering exactly what this fish was.

The only way I can describe it, is that it is very similar to a marine fish (dog faced puffer) but much much smaller. Yellow/brown markings but it was def in a tropical aquarium.

If anyone has any ideas I would be grateful as it is a long journey back up there.

Thanks

 

[SamUK]

this is why camera phones where invented

 

[StAbbitt]

Was it possibly a dwarf puffer?
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=90950

 

[nmonks]

This might be a surprise to you, but dog-faced puffers can live in freshwater. They don't like it, but they are certainly sold as freshwater fish from time to time. I bought a pair of specimens as freshwater fish in 1992, and was staggered to find out what they actually were. That's one reason I became interested in brackish water fish -- the boundary between freshwater fish and marine fish is an arbitrary one.

Anyway, if they are dog-faced puffers, they need brackish water of at least SG 1.010. Marine water (1.018) is perhaps even better, but they will do fine in strong brackish indefinitely. They are common enough in brackish water in the wild.

If all else fails, telephone the store and ask what they are, preferably if they can tell you the Latin name on their "list". Shops order in fish using lists, kind of like when you order Chinese take-out. A pufferfish should be very different from a cichlid though, so I'm surprised that they would sell them as one but you would identify them as the other.

Cheers,

Neale

The only way I can describe it, is that it is very similar to a marine fish (dog faced puffer) but much much smaller. Yellow/brown markings but it was def in a tropical aquarium.