Help With Fish Identification Please

[Tim_UK]

I saw this little fish in a tank at my local fish shop today but there was no name and no-one around to ask, could someone help identify it please ?
 
I thought at first it was a brackish or salt water fish as it looked like some sort of puffer but the water didn't seem salty.
 

TH3_5903 by tim-uk, on Flickr
 
 
 

 

[rpgmomma8404]

Looks like a type of freshwater puffer, what type I don't know. I think they are actually brackish. I don't know enough about them though to be 100% sure. 

 

[DrRob]

Can't see the spots off the rear, but I'd say that that's a figure of eight puffer.
 
Not a fish to buy without researching it's needs first. Lovely fish though.

 

[jakroebuck6]

looks a bit like a MBU puffer, not 100% sure.

 

[IonaMcCluskey]

it def looks like a puffer to me. there is one puffer, i think it's the congo, that fresh water. then there is another, might be the green spotted, that starts off in fresh when it young and moves to brackish/marine as it gets older.

 

[Tongue_Flicker]

There are south-east asian freshwater puffers as in 100% freshwater. I kept one a long time ago. Very aggressive and nippy type of fish even if you keep it with cichlids. Avoid mixing snails and shrimps with that one or they are juicy tidbits for a puffer

 

[DrRob]

Yeah, could well be a Mbu. As I said, careful research needed on these. Lovely fish but the set up needs to be right.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

There was a fishkeeper on here last year that managed to keep a Mbu Puffer in his 5/6-foot African Oddball community, whose name escapes me, but the puffer was only young/small when added and it was going to need a major upgrade even if it left the other fish alone. Mbus reach well over 50cm in captivity and their beaks can do some very serious damage!

 

[Tim_UK]

thanks for all your help, wasn't planning on buying one as it would soon eat up my tetras and guppies !

 

[MBOU]

It certainly is a Mbu puffer! They are gorgeous and can get a good sight bigger than 50cm given the chance!!
 
They are actually peaceful as puffers go! (Though will eat fish occasionally, tits more by accident than aggressiveness!), I have kept Mbus with rainbowfish, angels, plecs (commons are a nightmare as the attack the puffers for their slime coat), any catfish and loaches etc, even larger tetras and rasbora and danios.
 
The only thing I have ever seen a Mbu eat was a clown loach and that was because the mussel I was feeding the puffer was floating and the clown loach swam over the puffer  to steal the food and poor puffer with eyes that point mostly sideways accidentally grabbed the clown loach, the teeth of a 45cm mbu against the belly of a 10cm clown loach... poor mite had no chance, puffer didn't even eat it.
 
Mbus are so cute but really incredibly stupid! They really do make goldfish look incredibly intelligent!