I occasionally get asked questions about puffer fish. I'm generally glad to discuss the topic, but bad experiences make me apply the caveats that:
If you can compose a rational message, I'm very glad to talk about mbu puffers.
Oh, one final caveat - if you write to me, you might visit here again and find chunks of your posting on this page...
Amos really seems like a fascinating pet while most fish seem something less than full blown pets to me so far.
I find it so. It's not only that he has a discernible face, but also that he does things like cough, which feature him screwing up his eyes and obviously coughs! Sometimes he accompanies it with a little jump back in the water, which makes the whole exercise look like a scene from a cartoon. I think this is really a feeding action - I think puffers do it to blow silt and sand off the bottom looking for buried bugs and shellfish.
The other thing he does is yawn - biiiig stretch of the mouth with teeth sticking out. Honestly, you wouldn't believe a fish would yawn, and he does it exactly like a human. I can't think of anything that might explain yawning, except that he genuinely is stretching his face muscles. There are so many times I've watched him do it, and I haven't yet had a camera to hand!
Plus, he reacts to people in the room, and does so semi-intelligently. That is, when you enter the room he swims back and forth a bit frantically. If you ignore him and sit down and read a book (say) he settles down and rests on the bottom, but as soon as you get up he shoots up and starts swimming back and forth again. If you actually go up to the tank, if he hasn't been fed in the last couple of hours he goes almost berserk.
I'm new to the hobby and sure would like to have an Amos.
Puffers in general are quite fussy about water quality. This is especially difficult because of all the meaty food they need, which can foul the water really quickly if you're not careful. Plus, they are very susceptible to white-spot ('ich'). I think you'd be wise to get some general fishkeeping experience before trying one.
Amos is very pretty and i love his color is he really that blue?
No, he's not really blue - the pictures that look a bit blue were taken on some old film that seems to have been a bit suspect. That or it might be the plant-growing bulbs in the tank that don't match the colour temperature of the film. The picture that best matches his colour is on the 'photo album' page, where it shows the scar on his back. That was shot with a flash-gun, so the colour temperatures are right, and the colour rendition fairly accurate.
Does he ever puff-up?
Very rarely (which I take to be a good sign - in the wild they'd only do it if they think they are in danger I guess).
Every time I've had to lift him from the tank and I've used a net he's puffed. On the occasions I've used my hands and scooped him up he hasn't. Just once I was looking at the tank and he puffed up for no reason. That was in the middle of a heat-wave and the water was a lot hotter than it should have been, so that might have been what upset him. He goes almost perfectly spherical, with fins and tail sticking out at odd angles.
Are puffer fish easy to keep as pets? We are certainly enjoying our shy friends, they seem to be getting on with our tiger barbs.
If you can sort out a suitably crunchy diet, I think they are one of the relatively easy oddities. That is, they are not so rugged as the 'staple' fish, but they aren't really fiendishly tricky.
The other problems are that they are mostly wild-caught and a fair proportion therefore arrive at a tank already carrying some ailment, which manifests itself in due course, and that they are particularly sensitive to ich (whitespot). The best way of countering ich seems to be keeping the water in top nick, which can sometimes be tricky given the amount of polluting meat they eat - I have an oversized cannister filter on Amos' tank for this reason (and I'm sure plants help).
Where can I buy a T. mbu puffer?
Where will you put a 100cm (3 foot) long fish?
Have you kept 'difficult' fish before?
Are you prepared for a fish that might need a tank to itself?
If you can answer that lot properly, then the best suggestion I can make is to talk to (or visit) Maidenhead Aquatics. The Guildford branch is where I bought Amos, and recently they've had a fairly steady supply - the last few times I've visited there have been at least three in stock.
A mbu is not a beginners fish, however.
Do puffer fish need a water snail daily? If yes, can one buy them in bulk?
I don't think they need daily feeding - certainly, Amos doesn't always get it! However, he is getting quite large compared to most captive puffer fish (mainly because he's from a bigger species) and I generally work on the principle that the bigger a fish is, the less critical that it gets fed frequently (I believe the same is true of children :-))
I don't know of a way of buying water snails. However, there are various alternatives. Amos' staple diet is cockles. In the UK you should be able to buy these at an aquarium shop (one specialising in marine fish is much the most likely to have them). They are available frozen both in the shell and with the shell removed, and what you really want is the ones still in the shell. I buy packets by 'Gamma Foods' from the Tropical Marine Centre Ltd. It's a 500g bag 'cockle in shell', and looks like it has a serial number 35897. When Amos was small a bag lasted forever, but now he gets half a dozen a day, and goes through a bag at a fair rate.
For a small puffer you have to let one thaw, then prise it open and drop it in. They'll eat the flesh, but then probably bite on the shell a bit and generally exercise their teeth - that's the important thing, otherwise the beak can over-grow and they won't eat at all. Amos is big enough now that I can thaw them and drop them in and he can break his way in for himself. For large cockles I crack the shell with a pair of nutcrackers to give him a head start.
Alternatives (I believe they can fixate on a food if fed it exclusively) are more or less anything meaty, including mussel, trout, cod, earthworm, garden snail, bloodworms, daphnia (if the puffer is small enough for them to be worthwhile), etc. In general, if I'm having fish for dinner, Amos gets a sliver. Stuff from the garden (worms, snails) I wash under the tap to get rid of mud and surface bugs then drop or dangle it in. Obviously, with all this meaty food going into the tank, you need to make sure your filter is working well, and also fish out anything that isn't eaten quickly - there is potential to really foul the water.
My puffer jerks in the water - what's the matter with him?
If that is a sort of huffing/puffing movement that's OK - in the wild they use it to disturb sand and sediment at the bottom to look for snails or other shellfish.
Do they spend most of the time motionless or are ours doing this because we have only had them two days?
They go through phases. Amos spends weeks barely moving, then spends a while charging up and down the tank. It can be unnerving when they sulk, but (so far) I think it's just that, and has never been a sign of disease or such like. Younger mbu in particular are prone to anti-social phases (just like teenagers, I guess).
Has Amos ever stopped using his dorsal fin? My puffer didn't use his once yesterday.
Frequently. In fact, if you look at the picture where he's lying on the potato, the dorsal is lying down flat. He often just leaves it like that, barely (if ever) using it for anything. Even when he does use it, it's a pretty half-hearted waggling.
Are puffer fish more active at night? Ours are light sensitive at the moment, but that could be because they are very shy.
Mine isn't. It's definitely a day hunter. At night he sinks to the bottom and sleeps, quite obviously. I'm not aware of a nocturnal species of puffer, but it might exist. I think yours are just shy at the moment - I should think they'll liven up after a week or two.
Our puffer fish seem to change colour on their backs -sometimes they are bright like Amos and other times greyish. Is it that they are blending into the environment?
Again, I think it's moods, and Amos changes colour quite a bit. One thing to watch for is black bellies. Every diseased puffer I've seen has had charcoal grey patches round the edge of its belly, and as they get worse it spreads inwards. However, Amos sometimes gets this and, though I panic, he hasn't appeared diseased yet. When it happens, I think it's a cue for a bit of close monitoring to check it isn't the onset of something nasty.
I noticed the other day that one of my larger puffers about 2 inches long was completely brown and very sluggish looking he just laid on the bottom of the tank. Do you know what this is that he has?
No, not specifically. I do know that most puffers are wild-caught, so have relatively high chance of carrying disease or parasites. It seems that most puffers, when they get ill, develop brown or back shading, particularly round the belly. I've also seen it to a lesser degree if puffers that haven't gone on to be ill. Really I think you have to just monitor water quality, keeping it in top condition and leave the fish to get well on its own. In general I don't like just randomly chucking medications in the tank.
One of our puffer fish has whitespot. Also, he is gasping and almost seems to be coughing. This is causing us great concern as we feel so helpless and have no idea what to do next.
This (I have found) is the major problem with sick puffers - they look so miserable with it. Most other fish just carry on pretty normal until they get really sick, but puffer fish are so personable in the first place that they look a bit down, then they look really depressed & sick, and then the owner worries desperately.
Really, I can't suggest anything else, and I probably do have to warn you that I know of puffers who have died of whitespot despite medication. If you saw it early hopefully you'll have got medication in early enough that they will recover.
My puffer has ich. Medicated him at half strength due to scalelessness, but now there's a spot back. Any thoughts?
I think you need to do a full strength dose (I have some belief that they are not so sensitive to medications as some other scaleless fish, but not a great deal to back that up).
You could try the raising-the-temperature trick, but I'm really grasping at straws. I'm lucky in that most of my fish come from one of two nearby good quality shops, and I've rarely had any significant disease into any of my tanks.
How long do mbu puffers live?
I don't know. Amos lived just under six years with us. I think he was less than a year old when we got him, but I have no idea whether he died of old age or something else. I've not heard of any references for lifespan - I don't think they've been in captivity enough for anyone to come up with a reliable figure.
To comment on anything (please do) email ian.web@astounding.org.uk
