Tetraodon nigroviridis info

[JohnFM]

Are these fish only brackish, or do they do well in FW?
I've seen them listed as both.

Any info greatly appreciated....

 

[chris_1127]

i've only had mine a short while, but the profile in dr eberts book on puffers says that he has kept with some success in fw, but its lifespan and size wre greatly reduced compared to those hes kept in brackish or marine water. General rule seems to be light brackish as juvenile, increasing s.g. with age, and if you want you can go to full marine with an adult specimen.

keeping in freshwater seems to make them a lot more prone to fungal infections and other problems too - i bought mine in freshwater and immediately increased to light brackish and have had no problems at all; within a week most of the fish from the same batch remaining in freshwater in the shop had ich, and they lost a lot of them

 

[JohnFM]

Cheers. I've been thinking that if I do get one that the shop is calling freshwater I should bring it up to brackish afterwards.

How quickly did you bring yours up?

 

[chris_1127]

my brackish tank was at 1.004 when i added him, i took about 3 hours to introduce him, very slowly adding small amounts of brackish tank water to the bag he was floating in about every 15 minutes until the bag was pretty much full. ive done the same with candystripe and knight gobies and had no problems this way.
the guy at the lfs said that for small changes in sg ie 1.000 - 1.005 its not so bad to do it relatively quickly, its just if you were going for higher sg's that you might run into problems

 

[JohnFM]

I've seen other people say that this species is purely freshwater...anybody got any thoughts?

 

[SirMinion]

I've seen other people say that this species is purely freshwater...anybody got any thoughts?

They're wrong.

There is another species (leopard puffer) that is freshwater that sometimes get mistaken for the green-spot.

 

[chris_1127]

at least 2 lfs's i know of swear blind that they are freshwater, and both nearly always lose a lot of any gsp stock that they bring in to fungus/ich within a couple of weeks in fw tanks...

i gave up on trying to find a fw leopard puffer (t. schoutendeni) after several months of trying through all the lfs's i knew of and their suppliers. If anyone knows where i can get any in the uk i'd be very keen to hear....

 

[JohnFM]

Okey dokey, brackish it is then.
What about feeding - what seems to work best for their teeth?

 

[chris_1127]

havent had him long enough to say long term really, but i feed all my brackish puffers on bloodworms, frozen shrimp, and snails from my snail breeder tank a couple of times a week. my red-eyes arent big enough to tackle whole frozen shrimp yet so just bloodworms and snails for them at the moment

 

[JohnFM]

Snails are enough to keep their teeth under control then?
I always thought they would need shellfish or something.

 

[chris_1127]

don't know, mines not even 2" yet so snails seem plenty big and crunchy enough for him at the moment...

 

[Pufferpunk]

There is another species (leopard puffer) that is freshwater that sometimes get mistaken for the green-spot.

This is untrue. They are the same fish. There is no such fish as a FW green spotted puffer. there is a FW Congo spotted puffer, but is rarely seen in the aquarium trade.

See: Green Spotted Puffer

 

[chris_1127]

sorry but what part of that statement is untrue? i've seen several sources refer to t. schoutendeni by the common name of leopard puffer as well as spotted congo puffer. and it is certainly a differnt species to t. nigroviridis- african in origin as opposed to asian.

 

[SirMinion]

There is another species (leopard puffer) that is freshwater that sometimes get mistaken for the green-spot.

This is untrue. They are the same fish. There is no such fish as a FW green spotted puffer. there is a FW Congo spotted puffer, but is rarely seen in the aquarium trade.

See: Green Spotted Puffer

The Leopard puffer and the Spotted Congo two common names for the same fish (t. schoutendeni).They sometimes get mistaken by fish stores for the Greenspot despite they are quite a bit different and even come from different continents as Chris said.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Ok, I thought you were refering to the other (nonexistant) GSP, that is mentioned in Puffernet. Since the schoutendeni is rarely (if ever) seen in the aquarium trade (not in the US in over 20 years), I don't think there will be much confusion as to whether the spotted puffers folks see at aquarium shops are nigroviridis (BW) or not.