Keeping puffers together

[New Boy]

Can you keep different species of puffer together? I have a spare 15 gallon tank and am considering starting a freshwater puffer tank and wondered if I could keep two species of the smaller types? Just wanted to do a bit of research over a month or two first. I know puffers come from south america, asia and africa...can these be mixed or do they have different water requirements.

Thanks for all advice offered
Andy

 

[Pufferpack]

Puffer are best kept in "species only" set ups. That being said, a lot depends on the individual temperment of your puffers. I presently house 3 species of puffer together - Tetraodon travancoricus (Dwarf Puffers), Colomesus asellus (South American puffers, and Auriglobus modestus (Golden puffers), with no problems so far. If you do decide to keep any tankmates (puffer or others) with your puffers I recomend having a spare tank available to relocate the tankmates in the event of trouble (puffers that seem quite docile can "snap" and chew up their tankmates with no warning).
For a 15 gal tank you would likely be restricted to Dwarves or S/A's, if housing both you could probably house 3 Dwarves and 1 S/A comfortably. As puffers are pretty tolerant of water parameters (so long as it's clean) mixing species from different geographical locations doesn't seem to pose any problems.

 

[New Boy]

Thanks for the quick reply pufferfish

A magazine here in the uk has just done an article on pufferfish and it mentions that not many are tank bred, although I don’t want to breed them I wouldn’t want to be depleting wild stocks – which types have been bred in captivity?

Also they mention a couple of puffers such as tetraodon schoutedeni (from africa) and carinotetraodon irrubesco (from asia) as being quite placid puffers that are ok in community tank - it’s ok I wouldn’t dream of putting them with my cichlids and barbs! but would they get on ok together?

Is there a website with a list of all of the types of freshwater puffer?

Thanks again

 

[Pufferpack]

Tetraodon schoutedeni is reported to be one of the more peaceful puffers with other fish, but I believe they don't get on well with other puffer species (from what I've read, no personal experience with them or irrubesco). If you try to find one in your area be sure of the ID before you get it, a lot of shops confuse GSP's (Tetraodon nigroviridis) with them (GSP's are brackish and more aggressive).
Irrubesco on the other hand will get along with other puffers better than schoutedeni but is less tolerant of non-puffer tankmates.
As for breeding in captivity, about the only one I know of that is successufully bred on a regular basis are the Dwarf puffers. Quite a few folks have managed to get various puffers to spawn (my self included with my Tetraodon cutcutia) but the problem seems to be in raising the fry. The little gaffers are so small that it is diffucult to get them to eat anything and they usually die off within a couple days of hatching.

There is a Japanese site with an extensive listing of all types of puffers http/tekipaki.jp/~puffer/
but it doesn't seem to translate well into english, still the best resource for photo identification that I have found so far.