2014-05-29 New Tankmate! Puffer

Over the weekend wife and I stumbled into local store and saw this cute guy.
I've never hosted a puffer in my personal tank. But I've always loved their personality when I take care of them in stores. So we decided to take this guy home.

The saddle back puffer, also known by many other names including valentine puffer, is one of the smallest, most commonly available puffer in the aquarium hobby trade.

No puffers are reef safe. However, with caution and good diet, they can co-exist with many other peaceful tank mates, including invertebrates.

I am taking a slight risk placing it in a tank with a little bit of coral, couple emerald crabs, few hermit crabs, snails, as well as a couple urchins. But my goal is to keep it well fed so that there will never be a need for him/her to attack its tank mates.

I now have a six lined wrasse, an electric blue damsel, an Ocellaris clown, and an African flame back angel housed with this puffer. The flamed angel is the king of this tank with the most aggressive demeanor. But the angel just checked out the puffer and left it along.

One note I must stress, if you have never kept a puffer- be sure to provide shellfish or hard shelled crustaceans in its diet frequently. It is necessary for the puffer to chew on hard object to grind down its ever growing teeth, which are fused into a beak-like structure. Without this care, the puffer's teeth will overgrow and eventually starve to death.

Additionally, they can be a bit of a messy eater; so be sure to have good filtration system with a strong skimmer.

A small saddle back puffer like this doesn't exceed 4", and is also a slow swimmer that doesn't require a lot of room. So it's OK to host it in a smaller tank. But if you are looking to get any puffers not in the cantigaster family, most of them can grow up to 1' or larger, be sure to prepare tanks no smaller than 120 Gallon.

2014-05-15 Species Spotlight- Dogface Puffer

OK,
This might not be the rarest fish, but they sure are one of the more popular in tanks for fish only with live rock. Yes, it's unfortunate they are definitely not reef safe as they are capable of devour anything that can fit through the mouth with shell- snail, clam, scallop, shrimp, crab, you name it!

Dogface Puffer as seen on Live Aquaria

Found this guy at Liveaquaria- I have seen many dog face puffers but never one this dark and handsome! And at a very affordable price (for salt water fish anyways)!

I don't think I need to write too much about how to keep this fish- proper seawater level, proper temperature, probably not a ton of water flow since they aren't fast swimmers. But they are very hardy and rarely come down with diseases. The only disease I've encountered with this species in the past is pop eye, which could have been caused by an injury.

Although you never have to worry about this fish not eating, feeing the right thing is the key to success. All puffers have a "beak" like mouth that, without shellfish to grind it down, will grow infinitely. So if you are used to feeding only artificial flake/pellet food or even shrimp, your puffer may eventually suffer starvation from not able to eat with its over grown beak. 

I have personally seen people take their puffer out of the water, take a grinder to grind down the beak- no joke!

So then what can you do to help grind this down? Well, the natural diet of a puffer is mainly made of shellfish. So the most economic way is to hit up your local grocery store and get some clams. Crab legs would be a nice workout for them to crack and grind down as well.

You can also purchase some high-protein mix and freeze it inside the clam shells to entice the puffer to "chew" it down.