My Growing Puffs (dwarf Puffer Babies)

[Daniel454]

WOW nice fish shame your selling them

 

[iSnail]

WOW nice fish shame your selling them

I'm not selling them. Two of my tank-bred babies (actually it was one baby and one grown up) were given away to someone who can give them a bigger home than I can provide. My adults are still mating and I still find babies and eggs every week when doing water change.

Here's a cute pic of the male baby (mentioned above) joining mum. As you can see, he's less than ½ his mum's size.

 

[Hero]

Nice job mate Sorry to hi-jack but is it difficult to breed Figure 8 Puffers, or is a 25 gallon tank too small?

From what I have read figure 8 puffers have never breed in captivity.

 

[iSnail]

Spaghetti time These two still won't try any frozen bloodworms

 

[aaron123456789]

how do you breed them

 

[Heather.]

They are sooo tiny and cute

 

[jennybugs]

How on earth have I missed this thread in the past?

HOW gorgeous are your babies?

I've got the niggly suspicion from your pics of your little man that I may have 3 females...not a wrinkle in sight on my fatties

Have you made a diary or something on how you went about breeding your puffs?

 

[iSnail]

They are sooo tiny and cute

Thanks Heather

how do you breed them

 

[iSnail]

How on earth have I missed this thread in the past?

HOW gorgeous are your babies?

I've got the niggly suspicion from your pics of your little man that I may have 3 females...not a wrinkle in sight on my fatties

Have you made a diary or something on how you went about breeding your puffs?

aaron123456789 & Jenny

I'm afraid that I have not kept a diary on breeding them . They are not from one single batch but as a result of few surviving babies from many small batches. My breeding experience is still pretty limited and managing to keep these little ones alive I feel is down to beginners luck.

I have been very lucky that my big female DP is happy to breed with the other two males that I bought together, which I think is the very first hurdle - female chooses the partner(s).

I don't actually know what triggers them to breed but they seem to start courting behaviour around summer time and continue until November. My DPs seem to court under temperatures ranging from 73 to 78ºF so I don't think it's temperature. Feeding twice a day with frozen bloodworm may have helped preparing breeding condition.

Plants - I struggle to keep plants alive in my low light setups so they are mainly lightly/medium planted plus pieces of bogwood for exploring and hiding purpose.

During breeding season, the female spawns (scatters) a few eggs here and there everyday or every other day in the substrate and I just collect them in a net when doing my weekly gravel vac and wc. The eggs and newly hatched are very difficult to spot. Using a torch shone through the bottom of a shallow transparent container helps a lot in picking them out.

I keep the eggs in a net bag and place it where there is a good current to prevent fungus. When they hatch I temporarily keep the fry in a small tub with floating duckweed so that I can target feed them until they are big enough to go into a breeder box. Approx. 30-40% (tub) water change daily.

Feeding the fry - I use microworms twice a day right up until they take snails and frozen bloodworms.

I've posted some pictures of my breeding DPs and fry development in the Dwarf Puffer fish species index if you are interested. Just click on the link in my signature.

Hope this helps and not too long-winded

 

[jennybugs]

Brilliant! Thanks for that

I just have to wait a bit longer to see if I can spot any wrinkles I think. My three are fat and happy, that's the main thing I guess

 

[iSnail]

Brilliant! Thanks for that

I just have to wait a bit longer to see if I can spot any wrinkles I think. My three are fat and happy, that's the main thing I guess

Jenny, forgot to mention about the male wrinkles

From experience, males start to show their wrinkles around 4-5 months old from birth. I've had 4 males from different times so far. Still more babies too young to differentiate but will probably confirm that in the next couple of months.

Your DPs definitely look very happy and they look the cutest when they are happy and active

 

[jennybugs]

Hmmm, I've had my DPs since March so it may well be that I have girlies. The tank is rather heavily planted so I don't always have the chance to get right in close for a macro shot. When the worm feeder was up it was good, but they grew to ignore it for some reason