How To Pufferfish

Over our many years of fish dreaming, fish keeping, and fish writing, pretty much all of us have either wanted or had at least one Pufferfish tank and maybe more. In every article we've written about them, we reference their popularity; we'd be remiss if we didn't. All Puffers, Freshwater, Brackish, and Salty all have a special place in our hearts for their personalities (for lack of a better word, “fish-ality” just doesn't sound right). They're also endlessly cool to watch with their funky swimming motion and their general excitement to see you at the aquarium edge. There are going to be some differences in keeping different species of Puffers, based largely on their size, but there are a bunch of generalities that you can lean on when planning a display for them.

Freshwater Pufferfish come from a variety of locations around the world, the vast majority coming from Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. In all these locations, you usually find them in lakes, ponds and slow-moving portions of rivers like impoundments and backwater that act a bit more like still water environments. They generally like clear, fertile locations with lots of cover where there is abundant food for their food, which is primarily crustaceans. Puffers will swim ploddingly along eating all the snails, shrimp, crayfish, clams and pretty much anything they can catch and crush (which is a wide variety given their incredibly sharp teeth and strong jaws! These environments are usually host to a variety of plants.

You can mimic this environment in their home display; however, plants might be tricky. While they don't really consume much plant matter, Puffers will chew on just about everything to see if it is food. You can use plants in your puffer display, and some will ignore it, some will give it a bit of a nibble, and some will absolutely uproot everything in their path, so do a little species-specific research before dropping one into your (pride and joy) planted tank. Instead, maybe make some caves and swim-through opportunities with rocks and driftwood and even if you choose a Puff that is less destructive, choose hardy plants like Amazon Swords, Java Ferns and the like. Use a lot of plants to spread out the amount of attention that the fish can give each plant.  If you are going to use a substrate, choose a soft, small, grained sand, or smooth pebble. Pufferfish are also good candidates for bare-bottom tanks as it is easy on their soft bellies and makes removing uneaten food and fish waste much easier and more thorough.

Water flow should be sedate as Puffers are not graceful swimmers. You'll have to balance this with their need for strong filtration. They are messy eaters with big appetites. Just make sure that the flow in the tank is diffuse enough to not make heavy currents. Universally, water quality should be good, keeping nitrates under 20ppm, which will likely require both strong filtration and regular, large water changes. Further water chemistry and temperature should be based on the individual species. On the topic of temperature, all Puffer tanks should have a heater that is protected from them, or better yet, integrated into the filtration so that the fish can't get at it. As previously referenced, Puffers are endlessly curious about what is food and what isn't and have been known to gnaw on heater cables, which ends horribly.

Can you keep Pufferfish with other fish? For some species this works, for others, it is a hard no. Do some research on individual species before you add them to a community tank. Most Puffs will do best as an only fish in the tank, a display everyone likes to call “Species Specific.” Again, puffers will try to sample anything, and if a fish is slow or sedate, they're likely to get chunks taken out of them. Conversely, Puffers are fairly slow and sedate, so fast moving, nipping fish could also injure your Pufferfish.

A universal characteristic of Pufferfish is their ever-growing teeth. The diet of crustaceans means these teeth are constantly getting worn down and sharpened. This also means that it is a requirement to keep feeding hard-shelled inverts to your puffer in captivity. Snails are great food if you have access to a clean supply of them. They'll also love Gamma Cockle-In-Shell, Mysis, Bloodworms, and Krill. They will also greedily devour earthworms, redworms, live crickets and baby cockroaches. Many Local Fish Stores can also supply you with meal worms, live feeder shrimp and sometimes even bladder snails. Just make sure your Puffer gets enough shells in their diet. It will help them wear down their teeth, and the calcium helps them grow those teeth back! Note, if you're buying yourself some escargot, this species of snail (Helix pomatia) is a great snail to feed your fish as well. You want a snail that has a thin enough shell for the Puff to be able to break through.

So, after reading this you're probs thinking, “why doesn't everyone have a Puff?” Well, some of them get really big, which means a correspondingly big tank. Some of them are also prone to violence (there's no other way to put it) meaning that large tank can only have one fish in it. Which is totally worth it, but we admit it is a specific kind of display to have. All this being said, if there was ever a fish that was worth having as a single species, single individual as a display, puffers as a group are definitely that fish.

Pufferfish are possibly the best personalities in the freshwater aquarium hobby (though Oscars are a close second in our opinion). Some people have even reported being able to teach certain species of puffer commands (we've never seen this in person). While they do have some specific needs, they are actually pretty easy to keep. If you're ready to have one yourself, start doing a bit of research on appropriate species for aquariums and then head to your LFS and ask them to get you one from Aquatropic today!