Girlfriend brought home a Green Spotted Puffer...

[DaveB]

... for the freshwater planted tank.

Technically it's her tank (I bought it for her place when she moved out here - I have since migrated my tanks and myself to her place as well) so she can do what she wants, but I believe she was given bad advice re: their ability to live in freshwater by the store employee. I'm pretty sure their "brackish" tanks there are just regular freshwater anyway.

It's about 1.5-2 inches and seems happy. It hunts snails and ate shrimp from my hand tonight. It hasn't been aggressive at all yet. She's attached to him and honestly, I really like him too. (Despite the fact that I'm battling ich for the first time in over ten years, lost my female krib (one of my favorite fish), and he was the only addition and thus the likely source.)

So... what do I do with it? This is a FW planted tank and we don't really have any room for a brackish one. Not for at least another 18 months.

If it's young will it be OK for a while? Maybe we can raise him and then sell him to a monster fish keeper with a brackish tank? I'm in the habit of putting a lot of salt in my FW tanks, but surely it's not enough to really raise the salinity... usually it's just a few tablespoons (right now there are >25tsp in the 55g tank though to deal with the ich, but that's temporary). If he's really out of place I want to do what's right for him. And taking him back to a store that will just sell him to another FW tank isn't right. It's odd. This store is usually very good, so I would expect them to know these things. But I'm pretty sure I've seen these guys labeled as dwarf puffers in previous trips there.

This upsets me. I hate doing the wrong thing, but I've grown attached to the little guy and so doing the right thing is going to suck too.

 

[bigspizz]

http://www.**************.com/forum...cus/an-introduction-to-green-spotted-puffers/




If it is a SGP...here you go Otherwise post pics for proper ID, and proper help....They are fin nippers, brackish, pretty much species only, and I think if you picked up a ten gallon real quick and throw a cycled filter on it you would be good to go The puffer will stay sick in pure fresh..

 

[Pufferpunk]

Agreed. It will also make all your other fish miserable.

 

[bigspizz]

Agreed. It will also make all your other fish miserable.

Was that your post I linked him to?!?!?!?! lol TOO funny

 

[DaveB]

That article was actually what made me post the link.

He gets along with all the other fish now. But I figure that won't be the case as he gets bigger. I actually do have a 10g that's open (was going to use it as a breeder for the kribs) but he's not going to like it in there for long.

So basically his situation in freshwater is analogous to a parent with munchausen syndrome - he's not going to die, necessarily, but as parents we're just keeping him constantly sick for our own benefit? And there's no way he'll be completely satisfied, even for a little while, in freshwater?

I suppose that once I'm sure I'm rid of the ich I should sell him anyway, just to avoid getting attached.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Attachment is guaranteed to happen in days, not weeks... buy him a nice 30g & keep him.

 

[DaveB]

Heh, sounds like a plan. Maybe that can be the office tank or something. If he's pleasant now and I put him in something like that could he have tankmates? There were some very cool scats in the tank with him at the store, this fiery flourescent orange/red with black stripe, very small, like the size of a quarter. They would look pretty cool (I know nothing about them though).

I suggested to my girlfriend that we sell him, at worst keeping him for a few months since he's still young and should be OK with lightly salted freshwater, and she got upset about us harming him, so that's a step in the right direction for keeping him.

He ate krill out of my hand tonight

Here's a quick pic I got... he's about 2" head to tip of tail.

 

[chesterthehero]

awwww what a cute lil fin nipper



why do chicks love them lil adorable chubby puppy fish........ o... nevermind..

 

[Pufferpunk]

I would think the GSP should work with a scat, but scats are very messy & grow quite large. In a 30g, all you could keep would be a GSP. If you were planning on upgrading to at least a 55g, you could add more fish as it became marine, like some fast-moving damselfish.

 

[new2natives]

i dont know what it is about girls and puffers, but my gf likes them too. im glad though, because they are more entertaining than some of the other stuff at the LFS that some girls like. at least puffers are constant swimmers and have personalities

as for hand feeding, BE CAREFUL haha, ive been bitten a few times cleaning or dropping in bloodworms (not trying to hand feed) and it hurts!!!
my catfish have bitten me, but at least they dont have "beaks" like the puffers do.