Why Puffers are awesome...

[emartin]

Check out this video of a Fahaka Puffer (what AnubiasDesign.com has in stock for $17) eating a apple snail.

What makes puffers AWESOME though can be seen at 2:15.... WAY more personable in my opinion than cichlids... One of my 2" ones from Anubiasdesign already as early as today 'warmed up' to me and tried desperately to swim through the glass to see me, and attacked frozen krill readily... Cichlids just swallow their prey whole sometimes after stalking them (tyrannochromis and exochochromis are great for that. It's so funny to see them stalk feeder grass shrimp across a 7ft tank...) where as puffers take their time...

What's funny at the 2:15 mark is after the puffer realizes there is no more meat left in the snail shell it looks at the only and gives the 'begging puppy' look...

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[ackmon]

Neat video. I used to keep some of the smaller ones in my Malawi tanks, when I had them back in the early 90s. I always liked puffers. They used to bite their tank mates in half. Wouldn't eat them, just a fish torso and fish rear end.

Anthony

[emartin]

It was funny watching mine nibble on krill. They were taking clean U shaped super tiny bite marks out of them LOL.

What puffers did you keep? Do you recall?

I was thinking of keeping some cheap loaches (I've seen videos of them and similar bottom dwellers with puffers, though obviously there is no guarantee for their safety) like skunk or yo-yo loaches in with the fahaka, and maybe a school of tetras or danios (as seen in the above video).

I don't know if I'd do what Norbert does and keep a Pelvicachromis pair in with one though...

[Picklefish]

We have had our Fahaka for several years now and he is one of the few fish my wife likes. The kids love yo watch him eat crawdads/crawfish/crayfish not sure what you all northerners call them. When he is a hungry they very rarelly make it to the bottom of the tank. Puffy is a working fish and gets moved from tank to tank to remove snails. Of course he is always the only inhabitant of whatever tank he is working on at the time. It sounds like popcorn in there sometimes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v241/Picklefish/Misc%20Critters/FeedingPuff01.jpg

[emartin]

I say crayfish. Not sure what other NJ, PA, NY, etc call them though.

What I don't understand is crawdads and yabbies...how those names caught on is a mystery to me.

Do you have videos? Yours has some nice color to it... How big is it?

~Ed

[Flareside]

cool video. My kid watches Disney's Cars movie all the time. The puffer in the video kinda reminds me of Madder with those choppers... LOL

[ackmon]

What puffers did you keep? Do you recall?



One was called the figure 8 puffer and the other was called the spotted puffer or leopard puffer. Can't remember the latter for sure. They were about two inches long at the time though, and biting 4 inch mbuna in half. It was funny, because it was just how you described in your original post. Cichlids would be running all over looking for the food I put in the tank, and the puffer would kinda non-chalantly get up close to a cichlid, and bam, cut right in half. They never went for the head or tail, they went right for the middle of the fish. I guess it was a good thing I liked the puffers more then the mbuna.

Anthony

[exasperatus2002]

I say crayfish. Not sure what other NJ, PA, NY, etc call them though.

What I don't understand is crawdads and yabbies...how those names caught on is a mystery to me.

Do you have videos? Yours has some nice color to it... How big is it?

~Ed

In PA its crayfish.

[emartin]

In PA its crayfish.

I'm sure it's a different story in way western PA though...different country out there!

[jeremy1]

i have a dumb question---do puffers actually "puff" up? just wondering.:coz:

[emartin]

Yeah. Though NOT often and you may keep a puffer without ever seeing it puff up. They only do it when very stressed or threatened. Though (see video below) they can apparently do it if they just feel like doing it.

When I was taking my two 2" fahakas from their bag last week while they were only out of the water for maybe 10 seconds one of them puffed up. FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW! Nothing like a golfball sized baby puffed up puffer... If it wasn't stressful on them I would've ran to get a camera but I decided to put them in the bucket with fresh warm water (which it deflated itself immediately once in there).

Here's the video of a porcupine puffer puffing up apparently just for the hell of it... At a zoo or something:
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Here's wild fahaka puffers puffed up in Lake Nasser, Africa:
http://www.toadscastle.net/marduk/puffers/puffed%20up%20puffers/1743656966_a8b1406af7_o.jpg

http://www.toadscastle.net/marduk/puffers/puffed%20up%20puffers/_44008597_nasser630_puffa.jpg

Porcupine Puffer....wouldn't it suck to be the big fish that decides to swallow one whole?
http://www.toadscastle.net/marduk/puffers/puffed%20up%20puffers/191041163IgAgMt_ph.jpg

With the puffer's powerful teeth/beak, and then those spikes...would you want to be the guy unhooking one?
http://www.toadscastle.net/marduk/puffers/puffed%20up%20puffers/Puffer.jpg

[Greenhacker]

he makes me think of the guy of Goonies :neener:

[fischfan13]

Raise your hand if you were looking at the fish.:whistle:

http://www.toadscastle.net/marduk/puffers/puffed%20up%20puffers/Puffer.jpg

[joe_jaskot]

Raise your hand if you were looking at the fish.:whistle:

http://www.toadscastle.net/marduk/puffers/puffed%20up%20puffers/Puffer.jpg

I was checking out the girl. I thought she had a tattoo of a lead sinker on her arm. Then I realized the sinker was attached to the rod standing up on the rail. LOL!

[fischfan13]

I was checking out the girl. I thought she had a tattoo of a lead sinker on her arm. Then I realized the sinker was attached to the rod standing up on the rail. LOL!

Wow, I thought it was a tattoo of a large tear drop...LOL.
Ok see, so both of us are guilty of looking at the girls arm.

[Picklefish]

LOL about the tatoo and the uhhhh arm was was it ?

Puffy is about 8" or so. He has only puffed up once. I had thrown in a crawdad and it latched onto him with both pinchers. Well the crawdad wouldn't let go and puffy couldn't reach the crawdad. I panicked and thought my fish was gonna die and started looked for my snips to cut off the claws but then puffy inflated and the crawdad had to let go and them BAM dinner.

[Cosm3]

Wow his eyes move so much - definitely adds charisma.