Any ideas if a Puffer will do okay in a reef?

[Dena]

Everything I read says that they tend to eat corals, but I swear I've seen some in with corals. Any input on this? I don't have any SPS in the tank, just some zoas, leathers, hammers and shrooms. No shrimp or clams in the main tank. I would definitely start as small as possible. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks!

Dena

[Dena]

oh...i have some anemone's also.

[+mcallahan]

All signs point to "no". And i've never had one in a reef tank so I can't speak from experience, only research and what I've heard.

[subsea]

Dena,

Don't do it. If you want a puffer, then set up a species tank for a puffer.

Patrick

[Rjohn]

I had a spiny box puffer that ate all my crabs and snails. I failed to do the research.

[Dena]

Thanks LOL...I have a 20g long that could house a puffer...may see if they have small ones and make that his home. It's keeping live rock alive...has a couple of decorator crabs, but that's okay.

[Derek]

Depends on the corals you have. I was okay with euphyllias and a dwarf puffer but when I added LPS he started munching.

[+Hydro]

I have experience with this first hand, I love puffers. I had a Fiji blue spot puffer (our favorite fish) that I tried in my display tank. He was super friendly to the other fish, didn't bother any of the corals or crabs but loved to hunt snails. He died while we were out of town, long story short we had a breaker trip for the tank and we had some fish die from not having enough oxygen, really sad. After mourning his death we decided to get another of the same species and we found the perfect fish, QT for a couple of weeks (they get ich easily) and palced him in the display tank...decided to just keep an eye on him. Within 2 hours he ate EVERY zoanthid in our tank, probably ate 100 heads or more! The moral of the story is every fish has it's own personality and tastes, sometimes you can't just group fish together and say they aren't reef safe...people should say "they can go either way". My fiji puffer fish now lives with a green spotted puffer in a 40 gallon by themselves. They beg for food, spit water to get our attention, and are fearless. Green spotted puffers are unusual in that they can live in fresh, brackish, or full marine. You can buy these guys 1" long and they grow slow even if fed very well, they are much more reef safe simpley beacuse of the size of the fish and the size of his mouth. We have had ours for about 6 months and he is barely 2" long now, he will eat himself to death if we would let him. If you put the puffer in your tank and it doesn't work out they are very easy to catch, mine are so tame now that I could catch them by hand. Fiji puffer was sleeping when I took this photo, the GSP was hunting snails.

[Derek]

Blue Spots are awesome. I love them. They have really good personalities.

[+ACampbell]

I'm sure you're aware, but some get really big. I saw a porcupine puffer that was the size of a football at aquatek once.

[+Hydro]

The blue spotted only gets to about 5-6" (40 gallon recommended) but some puffers can get to 2' long. I like that puffers don't need much room b/c they really don't swim much, mostly just hover around slowly moving about the tank. What else that I like is they are very smart as far as fish go and seem to be very content living in captivity. They love to eat so if they are well fed...a fat puffer is a happy puffer. They are the dogs (pitbulls actually) of the fish world and are very interative with you. My blue spot watches me and he knows when I'm feeding the other tanks and gets all excited before I can get to him...spitting water and wagging his tail.