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Where puffer fish live
Puffer fish occur naturally in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
Some species live permanently in fresh water, others grow up in the brackish water of mangrove forests and migrate to fresh water as adults.
Still other species live as juveniles in fresh water and as adults in brackish or salt water.
Puffer fish for pure freshwater:
- Red-eye puffer (Tetraodon lorteti, also Carinotetraodon somphongsi)
- Two spotted puffer (Tetraodon leiurus)
- River puffer (Tetraodon fahaka)
- Giant puffer, ringed puffer (Tetraodon mbu)
- African Spotted Puffer (Tetraodon schoutedeni)
- Congo puffer (Tetraodon miurus)
- Crested Puffer (Carinoteraodon borneensis)
- Dwarf pufferfish (Carinotetraodon imitator)
Puffer fish for freshwater and light brackish water (salinity density up to 1.005):
- Eight pattern puffer (Tetraodon steindachneri, also Tetraodon pelambangensis)
- South American puffer (Colomesus psittacus and Colomesus asellus)
Puffer fish for brackish water (salt density up to 1,015):
- Spotted Puffer (Tetraodon nigroviridis, Tetraodon fluvialitis)
- Milk-spotted Puffer (Chelonodon patoca)
Puffer fish for heavy brackish water and sea water (salt density from 1,020):
- Dog Face Puffer (Arothron hispidus)
- Globefish (Sphaeroides spp.)
association of puffer fish
Tetraodon miurus Source: Image on Wikimedia Commons License: Public domain Author: Jamie C
Puffer fish are suitable not for community tanks. Satisfied puffer fish are nice and cute fellows. If they are hungry, they can eat the dorsal fins of the other fish up to the body, eventually causing the eaten fish to die. Often an animal is eaten in half, in about half the cases from behind. Even if the forepart is still twitching, they will let go of their prey as soon as they are distracted. The next animal is then simply eaten.
In some cases, complete fish such as red neon tetras and black tetras are also eaten. Glow-eye puffer fish eat e.g. B. adult guppies. The socialization with other species always involves a risk, even if the other fish are larger than the puffer fish or have short, fixed fins.
If they are also to eat snails in a community aquarium, it is best to keep the puffers in a species tank and only place them in the community tank for a few hours. You can keep a community tank free of snails in this way.
Black mollies are often recommended as possible companion fish, because they bite back and the puffer fish then become more cautious.
Because puffer fish have strong teeth and jaws for cracking shells and snails, it is better not to be bitten. Even small puffer fish, 5 centimeters in size, pinch very violently.
When working in the aquarium, e.g. e.g. when changing the water, puffer fish can jump out of the tank in panic.
The required aquarium size
Puffer fish are often offered in the trade with fancy names, so that an exact assignment is difficult. Many commercially available species grow to 6 to 8 cm and require an aquarium with at least 80 liters of water. Puffer fish are very skittish at first. There should therefore be some hiding places in the aquarium.
Why puffer fish inflate
Puffer fish inflate primarily for defense. Occasionally, the inflation is also a courtship or showmanship. Some puffers may inflate themselves as a form of training. Under no circumstances should puffers be intentionally alarmed to inflate them. For some puffer fish, e.g. B. dwarf pufferfish, inflation is possibly the ultimate means of defense in life-threatening situations and is thus a sign of extremely high stress. At least dwarf puffer fish can pump themselves so full of air when inflating that they then float helplessly on the water surface and can no longer release the air they have taken in.
For this reason puffer fish should only be caught very carefully. Care must be taken to avoid holding a captured puffer out of the water. He can swallow air and therefore inflate himself. The air can then no longer be completely released from the abdomen and the puffer fish later dies due to the constant buoyancy. If the puffer fish comes out of the water anyway, hold the fish in the water with the head up. The fish is made to inflate by gently stroking it. After a while of just holding the fish and not worrying about it, it will relax and blow the water and air out of its stomach. Since puffer fish bite, you have to be very careful.
Fugu specialty with danger to life
Puffer fish is a popular and expensive specialty in Japan. It is prepared by specially trained chefs from the Fugu kitchen. However, if the entrails are not removed at all or only partially removed, the courageous eater is in mortal danger. Many people die each year in Japan from the deceptive specialty.
About half of all puffer fish species contain venoms. The poison tetrodotoxin is produced by microorganisms in puffer fish that live in brackish or sea water. The poison saxitoxin can occur in all puffer fish, including species that live in fresh water. It is also formed by microorganisms. Farmed puffer fish do not contain the toxins.
Glow-Eyed Puffers
Glow-eye puffers, Tetraodon cutcutia, can be kept alone in a 60 cm tank. Instead of biting into the fins of the fish, it usually bites directly into the body. Fish are food for him. The species is not suitable for community tanks. be fed e.g. B. daily 3 to 4 large snails, which he bites in the mouth and 3 to 4 small mussels on every other day.
Food for puffer fish
What food puffer fish need
Puffer fish are often bought to deal with a plague of snails in the aquarium. It is usually overlooked that the puffer fish still need food when all the snails have been eaten. Some puffer fish eat no other food than snails. But puffer fish that take other food also depend on additional feeding with snails.
The teeth of the puffer fish grow continuously. Therefore, they absolutely need food with a hard shell, e.g. B. Snails. If the teeth do not wear down on hard food, the teeth grow until the puffer fish can no longer eat. He gets a veritable jaw lock and starves to death. In any case, keepers of puffer fish must run a small aquarium for breeding snails. However, not all types of puffer fish crack the shells of snails. Pea puffer fish e.g. B. the snails often eat from the opening of the housing.
A snail farm is simply a container filled with water into which snails from an aquarium are placed. Fish food, lettuce or green waste is occasionally added to the tank to feed the snails.
Suitable are e.g. B. mud and ramshorn snails. However, it is not the type of snail that matters, but the size of the puffer fish and the snail. Small puffer fish, e.g. B. Pea puffer fish can usually only eat small snails.
Puffer fish can eat a lot of snails in a short time. In one case, more than 60 empty mud snail shells were counted on the ground within 24 hours. Some puffers will eat until they burst, while others are not at risk of overeating.
Because residues always remain in the snail shells, a lot of water has to be changed. Any remaining shells should be removed from the aquarium. You can e.g. B. be sucked off when changing the water. Otherwise the remains of the snails will decompose in the water and the water can quickly become heavily polluted.
Puffer fish can survive for a long time without food. Only when the abdominal line is arched upwards does a puffer fish starve.
The following are suitable as additional food for snails:
Gammarus and woodlice have hard shells and are therefore sometimes suitable as snail substitutes.
Grove and garden snails can also be collected as food for puffer fish. The snails are briefly scalded and then pulled out of the shell. Larger amounts can be frozen as food for the winter time. Small snails can be fed with shell.
Mealworms are grabbed in the middle and spat out again. Then they are eaten from one end like a sausage.
Not every puffer fish eats all types of food listed. See the individual species pages for more information. If in doubt, the varieties must be tried out.
Brackish water for puffer fish
Brackish water is a mixture of fresh and sea water. The exact composition changes constantly due to the ebb and flow, wind conditions, etc.
Salinity is usually higher near the sea than further from the sea. At low tide, the salt water content is probably lower than at high tide. At high tide, the river water backs up and the freshwater content may increase in the backwater zone. In the estuary zone, the salinity probably increases at high tide.
In any case, relatively high fluctuations in salinity can occur. Many fish in the brackish water zone can therefore cope with a very wide range of different salinity levels. The accepted range can be from pure fresh water to sea water. The exact salt concentration is therefore probably not too important.
It is probably more important that the salt content fluctuates and does not remain exactly the same all the time.
Different sources give very different recommendations for salinity. For green puffer fish z. B. 3 grams per liter or 1 teaspoon per 10 liters recommended. 15 grams per 10 liters is also recommended during setup and break-in of the aquarium. 1 teaspoon is about 3 grams. A tablespoon is about 10 grams.
The salinity can be checked with a so-called densitometer.
A salt concentration of around 1.5% is often assumed for brackish water. In seawater, the salt concentration is around 3.5%.
Palembang puffer fish eating in slow motion: