What Puffer and FW Puffers

[Livewire88]

I already posted in that thread and advised against having any puffer fish with your present stock!

Did you miss my post?

 

[Chad]

What is his current stock?

 

[Livewire88]

Copied from OP's other thread;
 
Occupants 1 BristleNose pleco, 3 red minor tetras, 1 back skirt tetra, 11 rainbow shark, 1 Dalmatian molly
 

 

[Chad]

Thanks. I didn't realize this was a thead seeking a second opinion. Do you have the link to the first?
 
In my experience, the shark and the molly will stress out the puffer and make it very unhappy. Thetras will be food. The pleco will be fine with many puffers but not all.

 

[Livewire88]

Thanks. I didn't realize this was a thead seeking a second opinion. Do you have the link to the first?
 
In my experience, the shark and the molly will stress out the puffer and make it very unhappy. Thetras will be food. The pleco will be fine with many puffers but not all.

 
Here you go http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/413966-what-puffers-would-suite-me/

 

[Chad]

Thanks.
I'm going to go ahead and combine the two so we can keep the conversation in one place and keep all the replies together. I think that helps to make sure all the info pro and con is easily accessible.

 

[Gavinfleury29]

Well what's the pros and cons and what's the 1-10 of good living for the puffy guy I also was thinking for his beak I could feed him fw clams

 

[Livewire88]

Well if you are not going to accept having a puffer in your tank is a bad ideal, I wont bother wasting my time trying to help you any further.

But good luck and all the best.

 

[Chad]

Well what's the pros and cons and what's the 1-10 of good living for the puffy guy I also was thinking for his beak I could feed him fw clams

Introduction
I will list the pros and cons for you because I think it's good to put it out there but be sure to note that I agree with Livewire.

Puffer keeping is a specialty that requires a lot more work than people think it does and if done wrong can result in either your puffer dead or every other fish dead.

Cons
First off, the best puffers to keep with other fish are actually marine puffers. The dog faced and sharp nosed puffers are great. I love the tobys and they do just fine with other fish and most corals but of course not with inverts.

One of the main cons for puffers in a community tank or with other fish is that despite popular believe many puffers end up being the one that gets bullied. They aren't fast swimmers and all the movement that takes place in a community tank often gets too much for them and they succumb to the stress and die or spend all day hiding or retaliate brutally. Any puffer tank that has other fish in it should be slow moving fish and even better bottom dwellers that hide a lot or stay put. In most cases they should be as large or larger than the puffer. As I mentioned earlier I've seen large Mbu kept with large pleco (300 gallon tank) and I've kept FW puffers with cory, large loaches, and burrowing eels before. I've seen figure 8's with Archer fish before as well (125 gallon tank).

Generally puffer aggression is aimed at members of its own species or fish that remind it of one but the thing is you cannot predict when a puffer will decide to turn against other fish. I had a green spotted puffer with a molly (29 gallon tank). They lived happily for a little over two years then one day the puffer just decided it was tired of his tankmate and bit him. From then on he wouldn't leave the molly alone so I had to remove it into another tank. So you could go a year or two thinking all is well and end up with dead fish.

The other fish should be plain (the molly was a dirty white). Bright colors and wavy fins are an invitation to the puffer (sail fins seem okay). My personal opinion on this is that the colors and movement remind it of shrimp and crabs so it sees that fish as food. Of course I could be wrong, it may just be annoyed and telling the fish to shut up.

The other con is that when a puffer does decide to fight back the result for the other fish is devastating. I've seen angry puffers literally bite other fish in half. Since they aren't generally piscivores they just leave it in that condition. At best they will take a bit and leave a deep round hole in the fish (like my molly's caudal fin).

All the tanks where I have seen a successful blending of puffer with any other fish have been large tanks with drab slow moving bottom dwellers or fish that hide in a heavily planted tank (i.e. the archer fish set up) or marine tanks.

Another con is that puffer fish are messy. It's hard enough to keep the tank clean with just the puffer in there let alone having other fish. It's a natural result of not only the kind of food you have to feed them but how they go about eating it. Also, if you put in a clam and some other fish tries to take a bite the puffer won't care that he's in the way and will bite through him to get to the clam.

Another con. To properly feed a puffer it requires a specialized diet that also functions to grind the teeth down. I've had puffers that won't eat right, and have rescued puffers that weren't cared for and they require dental work if they don't. I have found the best food is clams on the half shell but as you can imagine this is costly.

Puffer = $$$ + Time

Puffers eat snails, crabs, clams, etc. so you can't have any of those things in your tank. I love puffers, I've kept literally dozens of them over the years but when I set up my last little tank, in which I really wanted a dwarf puffer I had to decide not to do it because I also wanted shrimp. You can't have your cake and eat it too with puffers.

Puffers very much appreciate having their natural environment replicated so if you keep one try to research as much on that species as you can and create a tank that has the plants (or lack of), flow, etc. that it is used to. Also many puffers will sleep on the bottom so a soft substrate is important. Smaller puffers like will often sleep on the broad leafs of certain plants.

Pros
In terms of keeping puffers with other fish there are no pros per se. Meaning you aren't going to get anything beneficial out of the relationship except perhaps a reduction in snail population if you have an abundance of pest snails.

Keeping puffers in general is very rewarding. They are like dogs. They can in fact be trained (to a degree, no sitting and staying mind you) to interact with you and though it might be a bit of anthropomorphizing they do seem to actually enjoy you being around. They do get bored as well and will go about biting things in the tank for fun.

Here's a picture of my valentini which is a marine toby. More and more reefkeepers are including them among their livestock.

 
They are incredible to watch as they hunt and their hovering, submarine-like movement is mesmerizing.

If you really want a puffer it's worth re-homing all your other fish to get one or to buy a second tank just for it. You can keep a male and a few female dwarf puffers in the same tank with each other. If it's heavily planted you could do a couple of males in a 29 gallon with several females each. Though they are small they are a great puffer to start with. Their teeth requirements are easy to manage with a few pond snails and they will readily eat blood worms as the mainstay of their diet. They are also pure FW so you don't have to worry about salt mixes and evaporation but for my money the best puffers to keep are the marine group known as the toby or sharpnosed puffers as they can be kept easily in a peaceful community reef.

Conclusion
So, all that said, Livewire is right to advise you against keeping a puffer in your current tank and you may want to reconsider keeping one at all due to the work and cost required to maintain a puffer in good health.
 

 

[Gavinfleury29]

Ok how bout dis a could have a species tank what's the very smallest limit gallon tank for this fish

I could have a species tank 10 gallon for any Brakish or not dwarf or not advise you may start (and the yelling)

 

[Chad]

You could have a 10 gallon tank with dwarf puffers.
 
If you had a 29 gallon you could keep the GSP in it and it would be quite happy but of course it would eventually need to go brackish and they do quite well at higher salinity as well, even up to marine levels.

 

[Gavinfleury29]

I only have a ten gallon what's the biggest tank for the best price at the best place

 

[Chad]

That totally depends on where you are. PetCo has a sale quite often that is $1 per gallon. You can pick up a nice 40 gallon tank that way for only $40 which would make a nice home for Green Spotted Puffers.

 

[Gavinfleury29]

I live in BC Canada

 

[Gavinfleury29]

Could I have some otos with them in a 10 gallon I would house there food in my 36 gallon (by food I mean freshwater clams) I would also feed flake, brine shrimp (could I have advice were to get BS and how to rase them) and some veggies