what type of puffer with african cichlids?
- Thread starter josue25
- Start date
I was just thinking about my fahaka who lives with many tank mates. It can be done but 99% of the time, it ends badly either for the puffer or the other fish.
mbu puffer would work perfect, fahaka puffers are little bastards that kill everything. A buddy of mine that owns a lfs keeps a mbu with a bunch of african cichlids and a florida soft shell in his 300.
That's ridiculous advice! This is where I leave the conversation & why I keep leaving this site. 
If I were to guess, I'll bet that Mbu is young/small. I know that mine would probably want to "sample" the softshell, out of curiosity, and that would not end well for the turtle.
We keep our Mbu with Tanganyikan cihlids (no Tropheus, though...) and they get along great but it suspect it would be a different story if we were talking about Mbuna. The Malawi species (like the Tropheus) have a really high energy level and in my experience, Mbu don't do well in high-energy environments. They want to just kind of hang around and explore for food and I could easily see large Mbuna intimidating them. Tanganyikans, of course, are generally a lot smaller and stay in the rocks, so don't have that kind of energy.
In other words, the dynamic of your buddy's tank could probably change as fish mature. Just my 2-cents.
