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Pea Puffers and 350ltr community tank? thoughts.

st.john

Member
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3 Jan 2017
Messages
59
Location
hereford
So i have set up my big tank and about to plant up - pic's will follow when i am happy with it!!
After the initial amano/cherry shrimp fortnight post fishless cycle i will be looking at fish and (unsurprisingly i guess) love the idea of a couple of pea puffers. I will have shoaling fish - likely including hatchets and lampeyes (still undecided but there is no rush!!) and am wondering what members' experiences are with Peas in such settings.
The tank will be heavily planted in places and has lots of hidey holes and separated features which should provide separated habitat/territories as well as open areas.
any insight?
Thanks.
 
Pea puffers are fantastic but don't do flow so that is the only problem I forsee. They are like little balloons and you know what happens on a windy day lol

They can nip the fins of slow moving, long finned fish and will kill amano shrimp that are far too big for them to eat. They can't help going for small moving things and I found that after ignoring my amano shrimp for 6 mths they then started going for antenna and mouthparts. Shrimp without faces don't work . If you don't mind the tiny assassins and also don't put any fish in with them that are likely to be aggressive towards them then they will be fine. They are a great fish to do species only.

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thanks lindy! that kind of reinforces (sadly) what i thought - that they would turn into PITA's... oh well! I want shoals and shrimp more than i do PP's... !
 
Well it is an excuse to get a 60l and get a couple of pita's in a tank of their own

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very true! in fact i've just been eyeing up my nano with rasboras and amanos in it......!
 
What Lindy says, they are awfully cute and extremely tempramentfull character and extremely territorial and like to live solitary. You will not do them a favor with putting several together. The older they get the more they will own your tank. They are king and deside, if they don't want a certain sp, in their territory they will hunt them down relentlesly. I had a few, took 2 months and had to seperate them. The one i left in the community tank started a few months later terrorising the others, first i had to remove the T. Pumilas. After that he desided to Oreychtis had to go as well.. Finaly i removed him and gave him a small tank for his own. But gave him away later on to someone with a much bigger tank.

Very risky communitie fish.
 
You might look at Lauris journals, he's had puffers for a year or more with cherry shrimp & various shoaling fish
Escape is most his most recent
 
I started out with 1 female in my 100 liter planted tank. At the time there were ottos, amanos and a few sundry tetras/shoalers. I don't think she ever truly settled and never seemed entirely happy.

They can be very slow, deliberate feeders - so things like live daphnia, frozen bloodworm etc were almost invariably swallowed up by the other fish unless you deliberately added loads... So her staple diet became bladder snails and asellus which none of the other fish would touch. She never to my knowledge attacked any of the shrimp or fish or was remotely aggressive to any of them. Although the flow in that tank was not very high, she didn't seem to mind it at all.

Just over a year ago I moved her into a smaller (35 liter), heavily planted (think impenetrable jungle!) tank with six new puffers and she was a different fish. Far more relaxed and a much better feeder - she will actively hunt down things like scuds (although that may be in part to competition with the other puffers) and spends her days picking through the moss, ferns and floaters looking for food.

The other six grew well and matured around 6 months ago. They started to breed on a semi-regular basis (the group is four males and 3 females). I could never retrieve any eggs as the non-breeding females always follow the breeding pair around and hoover up the eggs so I just left them to it for a few months. There was/is never any full blown aggression - just the occasional sparring between rival males (almost always in the afternoon when they usually get frisky). They remind me more of a group of loaches that are continually jostling each other (though at 10% of the speed). I started occasionally throwing in some low quality, excess cherry shrimp from one of my other tanks and was surprised a few weeks later when I noticed most of them were all still alive. If they were big enough when they went in, they were either capable of evading any interest or just didn't get any interest at all. As you can imagine, the shrimp population doesn't grow though - shrimplets are soon hunted down.

Around October last year I split them up to try and breed them properly. I moved 2 pairs into separate tanks by themselves and left the original female and 2 males in that tank. None of the 3 groups were happy. Very shy, stopped feeding well and generally looked miserable. I put them all back together 2 weeks ago and they've started breeding again...

So based on my experience with this group:-

- treat them as a shoaling fish - probably at least 6. They are much happier in a group and aggression seems to be diffused (although I may just have a docile group).
- heavily planted including floaters and lots a wood, twigs etc
- feed heavily. They seem to lose weight really quickly. (and they love scuds if you have the room to culture them elsewhere)

Personally I'd love to see a bigger group in a 350 liter tank. With the right setup and tankmates they would be fascinating. Hatchets I'm sure would be fine, as would lampeyes/tetras etc - the only real issue would probably be feeding them when having to compete with the faster fish. Smaller shrimp will always be a lottery.

Still in my top 3 favourite species after 25 years of fish keeping.

Regards, Mark
 
Recently i saw a scientific fish documentary about a river system in India, unfortunately forgot the title.. They filmed and caught one little pea puffer roaming the river bank solitary. So they definitively like to wander off solitary in their natural habitat. So i have not the idea they should be treated as schoaling fish in captivity. They might schoal occasionaly in nature, i do not know, i guess they probably would since they need a mate to propagate. But their need to be able to go solitary if they feel like it is something we can never give them in captivity.

I only kept 2 to begin with, but very soon realised i wasn't equiped for it.. As small as they are they need a vast amount of space.

In my experience i started out with 2 in 110 litre tank.. Didn't work it was a constant battle for space, hidding places enough but they kept searching for eachother looking for a fight.. The subdominant one always loosing the fight started blowing off steam on the other tank mates and chassing them. Had to remove it. The one left behind was rather friendly the first 6 months and looked like enjoying himslef alone very good. And one day out of nothing he started picking fights with the barbs, 4 times bigger than he was. And he was a realy mean little bugger, picking one victim at the time and go for an exhaustion hunt. Chassing it for hours around the tank. I saw him planning an ambush, hunting a fish into a specific corner behind some wood. Knowing it needs to come out the other end, Than go there into hiding waiting for it and attack again. Absolutely very inteligent mean little devil he was. 110 litre is to small for a solitary pea puffer..

They realy are true pet fish with a very high intelligency and induvidual character. The learn to know you and ask for your attention when sitting in front of or maintaining the tank.. That's what makes them so adorable, i would love to keep more of them, but unfortunately i can't give them what they need.

I tried and personaly meanwhile i developed the feeling to lean a bit towards the idea that, they are not at all suitable as captive aquarium fish and should be left in nature. As small as they are their personality is way to unpredictable and much to big for any regular sized aquarium.
 
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Recently i saw a scientific fish documentary about a river system in India, unfortunately forgot the title.. They filmed and caught one little pea puffer roaming the river bank solitary. So they definitively like to wander off solitary in their natural habitat.

This is a similar clip I found a while back of a solitary pygmy puffer in the wild:



This on the other hand shows a very different behaviour:



So they definitely shoal sometimes. Like many other species they may well group together when young and drift off when they are older or are looking to breed.

It's also widely reported that pygmy puffer populations have been heavily impacted by capture for the aquarium trade - so it might be the case that solitary individuals are the 'leftovers' when the rest of the shoal has been netted and/or numbers are locally very low.

I've read in various places that these puffers are now farmed in the far east but never seen anything to back that up. If not, it is slightly scary that the tank fulls in all my local shops currently are all juvenile...

Regards, Mark
 
The last time i saw them in the LFS they were about <10mm in size, maybe 15 schooling together, i guess they are captive bred, but don't know. The lfs owner ones told me he had them accidently breeding in the shop.. When i bought them it were 3 juveniles also around 8 to 10 mm in size, one unfortenately died the first week. But they stayed very close together the first couple of months and kinda separeted into territory at about 20mm in size. One had the right back corner as refugy in a bush of crypts. But was in a way not allowed to come out.. The other had the whole tank but stayed more at the left side. But if there was confrontation he usualy was the winner chassing the other back into his crypts and than go back to his own place.

In a way at first it is fun to observe how this game is played, chasing eachother back and forth, stalking and challanging eachother for a fight. And realy having a territorial marker. It was a piece of driftwood and crossing that line was not appreciated and always resulted in imediate reaction of the other. In the beginning it looks kinda cute not realising how serious it actualy is for them. It became clear to me when i saw one shooting away and the other was still hanging and holding on like a pitbull to the others tail. They realy get physical and want to damage and kill. Ambushing little backstabbers.. I might have been unlucky with picking 2 little barbrawlers living to fight. I do not know, how can one know if they all happily school togehter as juveniles in the lfs.

The barbs are about the same as showen in the video above.. And he took them on fearlesly, they know very well they are the ones inflicting the damage and go for it.. The barbs were way to fast and agile, be he just tried to wear them down and stress them out into exhaustion.. He wanted the whole tank only for himself, the only thin not provocing him were actualy the cherry shrimp, never seen him take any..
 
that's a great story! thanks! They sound brilliant, but deffo going off my hit lists - little fekkers!
 
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