freshwater puffers?

Anyone keep them? I bought one from my friend, it is about an inch long. I researched them a bit and learned they like brackish water.. sorry no pic yet, but he is yellow with black dots and a white belly. Mark was stunned; he said "isn't that a saltwater fish in your tropical tank?!" I have him in with a gourami and two swords; no problems as of yet.

We have 3 different sizes of them in our fish room...I don't know much about them, but they're awfully cute to look at!

K~

Is it a figure 8 puffer by any chance? They are brackish, but I know of them being kept in fresh water, and in full salt, so it probably wont be a problem.

puffers don't thrive in fresh water and only salt water puffers can be in salt water. that puffer is a brackish fish which means you need to salt the water or it'll die.

and as for keeping them with gouramis and swords... puffers are nippy. eventually it'll kill the other fish in the tank. most times... puffers need to live with puffers and even then... you may have a lot of nipped fins.

http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/Fishindx/puf-nigr.htm

Yeah, Aleesha's right on. They can survive for short periods in both fresh and saltwater, but is it fairly stressful trying to osmoregulate in either. Hard, brackish water is ideal. They are awesome little guys though, so I hope you can find a suitable home for him soon.

-Evan

I kept a dwarf puffer once. Little fin nippers they are, but adorable!

NIppy is a good word for them. You might try adding just a tad of salt, not enough to bother the other fishes. It might help out, but they really need their own brackish water tank to thrive best.
They are some really cool fish.
Wolfy

Swordtails can be brackish too so you could set up a brackish tank and have them together. But the Swords tails will be gone soon......LOL.....

Whats cool is we keep some Sail Fin Mollies in full salt.....that really blows peoples minds.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nightmare Creatures

Whats cool is we keep some Sail Fin Mollies in full salt.....that really blows peoples minds.

---

Yeah, mollies are quite adaptable. We breed sailfins to feed to new arrivals that are picky feeders at the aquarium until we can get them feeding on prepared foods. We raise them in both brackish and full freshwater, and have kept them in full saltwater before also. They breed best in brackish, but we've had babies in all salinity levels. I have thrown many-a-mollie from freshwater (~150 ppm TDS, pH 6.8) directly into saltwater (30+ppt, pH 8.3) with no obvious signs of acclimation stress, at least for those that don't get eaten immediately that is :D.

-Evan

unfortunately, the stores sell them as freshwater puffers so that more people will buy them... as honestly is not always the main focus of all fish stores :(

I've seen so many brackish water fish sold as 'fresh water' that it's sickening. They sell a LOT of gobies this way.

Puffers are die hard fin nippers, that really sounds like a figure 8 to me, cute but nippy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by recycling goddess

only salt water puffers can be in salt water

---

I'm not trying to start anything here, but that isn't necessarily right. I have personally kept a figure 8 in full salt (1.024-1.025 sg) for around 2 years. It can and does work. As mentioned earlier, mollies are another example. They can do just fine in fresh or salt or anywhere between. Another case to mention is the bull sharks that swim up into the amazon river. Also salmon hatch in rivers, swim out to sea, then return to the rivers to spawn. The key to making it work is acclimatizing them very slowly. I know that generally we are taught all fish are strictly either fresh, salt, or brackish, but there are exceptions to ever rule.

Jen, if you decide to set him up separately for more controlled salinity, and to avoid fin nipping... they do rather well in a 10 (ish) gallon set up. Or like a 12 gal. Eclipse tank? I'm relitavely sure that the figure 8's don't get as large as some other species. Don't hold me to that, I've got several years of dust on my fish knowledge!:oops:

Brackish water fish are some of the more adaptable aquarium fish around. It doesn't surprise me at all to find a brackish puffer has survived in full strength saltwater for that long, but most brackish water species prefer brackish water. There are a lot of species, including some puffers, that will spend their juvenile life in brackish estuaries, and then migrate out to sea as adults (I don't think figure eights do though). Either way, I agree that any change should be done slowly to lessen the stress on the little guy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by piranhaking

...Another case to mention is the bull sharks that swim up into the amazon river.

---

Your comment of bull sharks brought back memories of one my favorite discussions back in college, so here's a little side note on the osmoregulation capabilities of elasmobranchs verses marine bony fish (a little of my geek aquarist side coming out :D) - All saltwater bony fish are in a constant battle to get rid of salts entering their body using a variety of means to do so (just as all freshwater bony fish are constantly fighting to get rid of excess water). Elasmobranchs are much closer to the osmolarity of sea water by having increased levels of urea and TMAO (trimethylamine oxide) in their blood (the TMAO also acts to help prevent damage by the high levels of toxic urea in the blood). When bullsharks swim into freshwater, they dump the high levels of TMAO and urea, and so are able to adjust to the huge change in osmotic pressure that much easier. Freshwater rays also lack the normally high levels of TMAO and urea found in their marine relatives.

Sorry for the off topic post, it's just one of those amazing adaptations so common in the animal world.

-Evan

I am keeping him in a 10g tank by himself; did someone mention that it'd be OK or desirable to keep them in pairs/groups? If so, I will go and buy the remaining two at the store.
My friend did warn me that they were aggressive; this one hadn't harmed my tropicals, but I made it a win-win situation by giving the tropicals to my dad who wanted to setup a tank, and keeping the puffer by his lonesome. So now, he is in a brackish 10g setup.. here's a pic.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...minipuffer.jpg

He's a QT!!!! I love their little faces and teeth!!!

yes you can keep small groups together. i would just do a little check on how big it'll get and how big the tank needs to be to house more than one :)

in light,
aleesha

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by recycling goddess

http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/Fishindx/puf-nigr.htm

---

according to this link... they can get 6" which would mean... only one in a 10 gallon tank. if you upgrade to a 29 gallon tank... you could have 3 together :)

Hm.. I might just keep him solo. I played an awesome joke on Mark, since he didn't know there were brackish/FW puffers; I said "how do you like the new fish?" and showed him the tank; his eyes bugged out and he said "that's SALTwater, isn't it?"
I would love to get a SW puffer.. but of course, that would mean getting a SW tank..

Evan, interesting post on the sharks. I had no idea there are fresh water rays, now im gonna have to go look that up, see what you did :P. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that isn't a figure 8 in the picture. They have much more distinct yellow banding around their spots, and their spots are usually more of an odd shaped blob or "saddle" than a nice round spot.

Now if there were only freshwater sharks (not the fake ones that are really catfish..) Does anyone know if those red-tailed "sharks" are really sharks, or not?

They aren't.

South American Puffers are such cute little guys, they are from the Amazon basin in South America so they are strictly freshwater. They are very small, but active Puffers so 10g is minimum for these guys. They can be a little aggressive, so you have to watch out who the tankmates are, you might end up with some missing fins, or even missing fish. One other problem is their teeth, you have to make sure they are getting hard, shell like food to grind their teeth, they are in many ways like a rodent, where they need to keep them trimmed. I feed dried krill, its pretty crunchy. You can also get shells and stuff. I recommend these fish because the are cute little buggers.

Oh and Green Spotted Puffers are indeed brackish fish. They live in coastal areas and live in or very close to freshwater as youth. This is to stay safe while they grow up. As they get larger and move into adulthood they move out into the reef. At this point in their lives they are saltwater fish, and will not respond to freshwater very well.

I am pretty upset; my puffer died. He got stuck in between a curved rock and gravel in the bottom of the tank; I am so bummed.

Aww, I'm sorry to hear that Jen. :( A puffer that I loved keeping (even though they are finicky little boogers) are dwarf puffers. If you think you might want to try again I suggest looking them up, they are characters.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Entropy

Aww, I'm sorry to hear that Jen. :( A puffer that I loved keeping (even though they are finicky little boogers) are dwarf puffers. If you think you might want to try again I suggest looking them up, they are characters.

---

Hey! I have a happy update; he is not dead. He must have either been sleeping, or hypnotized, because I went in to take his "dead" body out, and he is swimming around just as before. Weird.. but I am glad that he is ok. :)

hahahaha puffers are goofy :P

and... there are no true sharks (in pet stores) who live in freshwater.

except in south america... there is a freshwater shark.

Great news.

As for the sharks, no, no freshwater sharks but I trained dogs for a guy in Indiana who had a 600gallon shark tank in the middle of his house. No 'big' sharks. Mainly just the smaller sand type sharks. They were awesome.

we have a pet store near us that has a shark tank... has a huge eel in it as well. very cool!