mountaintoppufferkeeper

Chapter 2 begins .... I either have 2 males or a male and a female but we got a shot ....currently 🙂

This is the process i currently use and has worked on puffers in "less than ideal" condition on arrival

I can say that the med trio took this puffer And the result was one of these four puffers

Thanks @Guppysnail. I do the coop med trio to personally and always have fritz accr if i need to dose for ammonia chlorine or chloramines. I have personally done Paracleanse (praziquantel), expel p (levamisole HCI) , pannacur c which [requires some math and a scale to dose] (fenbendazole)

Lol ... he is a good guess. i was described as a redbearded sasquatch at work today true story

Today I tried using easy flow sponge filter upgrade kit on top of a box filter ... not quite seamless but it works and makes those box filters silent Easy flow kit used: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/filtration/products/easy-flow-sponge-filter-upgrade-kit

They bring the puffer for sure very interactive So far they have all been very friendly the one here had no interest in them at all just his food.... whixh was frozen tilapia that meal

Update.... found a likely female thanks to @Leo2o915 more to follow tuesday..hopefully

Congrats cool tank ! I have not personally kept amazons but I have kept 11 species of puffers so far most in breeding colonies and some care is probably applicable. I do know a few who have and have taken the journey with them. I would defer to the experts on amazons but in my opinion: Teeth are a concern for some puffers more than others but the amazons seem to be the quickest to grow from what i hear about them. I feed my puffers primarily snails, shrimp, tilapia, repashy, ecobugs, dubia roaches, earthworms. i havent tried the puffer'pashy in the below video much but it has worked on a couple of puffers. I think the tooth growth for them is more often than not an "eventual" issue but its basically like trimming a dogs nails when it does happen. Here are a few articles on them i had to google translate this when it opened: https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:43866 One more paper https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02514.x There may be more on scholar.google.com it is a good resource for research on many species generally from peer reviewed journals and field research. Dan's fish , coop affiliate for fish, currently has great videos on them linked below: Thanks for the heads up @nabokovfan87

Time will tell @DaveO ill give it my best shot though

@Colu i believe so. The intention was get a mix of males and females and build up from there. Still learning but I believe the males are darker and a little bigger for holding the fry

The new members of the fishroom have arrived. Enneacampus ansorgii freshwater african pipefiah collected in Cameroon. They are a pretty cool very little species so far. Looking forward to raising a tankful of these once I get the process sorted. 40 breeder that gets some morning sun: four pipefish, snails, scuds, They seemed to start feeding on rotifers in the water immediately and a few grindal worms i put in for them

@Lennie im curious on the brackialsh and goby SME answers. For the identification this publication lists more about gobies than I knew prior to finding it today. It does cover many brachygobius species taxonomy starting l at page 51 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=A+revision+of+the+gobiid+fish+genus+Mugilogobius+(Teleostei%3A+Gobioidei)%2C+and+its+systematic+placement&btnG= This field study only found xanthomelas in pure freshwater (Easiest way to search nih study is save as pdf and find by scientific name) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9169113/ Salinity is a cool variable. Some studies note variances in salinity can change the digestive processes and functions in some species. That will be a fun project to hear about.

I have not yet taken the brackish step yet but @Biotope Biologist may have just convinced me:). @Lennie just based on the puffers I keep and success vs food results with tankmates, i would look more to mollies or more figure 8s. I have always had more success with midwater speed and agility than bottom dwelling. If i was doing brackish i think id try my hand at nerite snail ranching as a food and just the normal food earthworms, ramshorns, pond snails etc. I would be a little more careful on the amount until I figured out how long the food could go in the salinity i ran my brackish puffer at. I havent found any research on differences on belly color in figure 8s. In Pao puffers often the male has a darker pattern or base color on the belly. Most puffers ive kept change intensity and pattern based off mood etc...a darker belly could just be how that puffer decided to show that day

Thanks @Chick-In-Of-TheSea. @anya it depends on your preferences l and what is available. Sorry on the slight delay: I feed variety as much as possible to avoid nutritional deficencies and keep puffers enriched and willing to eat new foods and use varied feeding strategies. My personal experience is if my hairys are conditioned to a feeding schedule of easy meals they wont go out of their way to actively hunt mid and top water fish that are fast and aware....but they will set ambushes in prefered locations if the fish happens to swim into it its food. Some will bait their ambush with a piece of food to lure a fish in. Ive found they each have different food preferences by individual puffer . I do earthworms, frozen tilapia strips, livebearer culls, and the rest of my below list for hairys. I have never personally seen the issue with lockjaw from thiaminase rich food. I feed a variety of food to all my puffers including hairys and i use vitamen supplements (vita chem) so that might be helping prevent the vitamin deficency thiaminase is reported to cause. Frozen 50% of diet +/- Frozen strips of tilapia ( i freeze with 6 or so drops of vitachem and a drop of garlic guard per strip) Frozen krill ( i freeze with two squirts or so of vitachem and a few drops of garlic guard per flat ) Frozen raw crayfish ( i recieve frozen and repack with 6 or so drops of vitachem and a drop of garlic guard per crayfish) The tilapia has mostly replaced the krill due to easy of prep, easy of purchase, and a closer to nature food source for an ambush puffer. Live foods 40% of diet +/- Earthworms - cultured here on organic greens in a worm farm in the fishroom snails : cultured and fed with repashy gel foods, extreme fish food, and organic vegetables. Cull livebearers: from other tanks cultured and fed with repashy gel foods, extreme fish food, and organic vegetables or polycultured livebearers in their tanks why are feeding off of the cleanliness of puffers feeding Fresh (not alive) 10% of diet Dubia roaches, crickets, superworms, soldierfly larvae ( ecofresh currently)

Thanks @xXInkedPhoenixX. @anya some will say no never. I have been keeping hairys for years with eachother and some success using short finned fast midwater species , normally a livebearer, with them. I would view any fish with a hairy as hairy food at the discretion of the puffer. That said, outside of a colony with just hairys, I have had some success with variatus platys, limia vittata, and kidders livebearers in my puffer colony tanks (to include hairy puffers). A fast short finned midwater species has been the most successful for me for longer durations. Fast and aware are equally important. A slower bottom dweller has never worked for me .... at all. I wouldnt personally attempt anything that is a bottom dweller with any pao species of puffer. Livebearers seem to figure out cover a bit better than other types of fish do here. After 14 days or so they know how to avoid the puffer pointy end in my tanks. I have kept hairys in 40 breeder and larger tanks for 7 years without any issues personally. I have had spawning many times and no injuries. That of course could change in the next 5 minutes; It is more up to the puffers than me if and when the dynamic changes and friend becomes food. With good plant cover and feeding foods on a schedule my hairys have generally decided it is not worth the extra effort to vigorously chase smarter livebearers for a meal when they know they are getting delivery. While they dont go out of their way to chase meals, they will eat those livebearers who occasionally get inside a puffer ambush. Anything in my hairy puffer tanks that isnt a hairy puffer is eventually going to be food but the livebearers often live in a longer term self-sustaining colony with my puffers.

Update found the stress inflation this is the same puffer over the course of a minute. I have never aeen this in a hairy personally. This is Pao palustris And one more hairy puffer puff this is also one of those spawning color changes and displays. The 2nd hairy is in the clay pipe

Thanks for the heads up @DaveO best is arguable but ill give it a shot. @anya To me it could be because the puffer wants to puff up to exercise etc, or as a reaction to something in or around the tank. There are some observations I have made with my hairy colonys and other puffer colonys on types of inflations. In general : My puffers will puff up more in a colony setup. Often here puffing up is often just communication more than fright. These are just well fed bellies not puffed up hairys this is spawning inflation with the color change and "waggle" Male courting female This is more of an establishing dominance inflation by young hairys i can not find the stress inflation photo of a yound pao puffetlr that i have posted on the forum before. That one occured once with an F1 Pao palustris fry when reintroduced to their siblings afger a few weeks. Stress inflations, in my opinion, make the puffer look like a ball vs the others shown above that occur often in groups and here are fairly normal.

45 minutes west of colorado springs on highway 24 9200 feet up trout lakes woods and the freshwaterpufferfish i keep and occasionally breed 🙂

Welcome to the forum. There are a few of us in colorado . Im up in divide.

Cross rivers were all in the 6.5"- 7" range when sent to forever homes... the one kept back for the cross river project is now 8-8.5 " ish...... a pretty cool puffer species

@Halvyt Thanks kindly. I could certainly be confidently wrong of course that is just my best informed belief when i moved the 3 on.Im basing my determination off of the opinions of others, and my experience with the other puffer breeding projects here. I was already leaning that they were all males based on personal experience with puffer breeding behaviors here then I asked those with more experience than I have with the species. The behavior of all 4 cross rivers towards eachother, once they hit about 7"-8" (17-21cm) long, was similar to the spotted congo puffer males, and males of the pao species I keep in colonys toward other males. ( I'll add the behaviors in the other species of puffer to the end for comparison. ) Once it seemed likely that I had males I asked the opinions of those with experience collecting, exporting, or working with them. The consensus there was the males have the spotted pattern and females less spots and a more lined pattern. Its still not confirmed one way or the other and I could of course be confidently wrong about what the males and females look like, but my understanding is the lined crossriver puffer with less red spots are sometimes collected with the spotted cross rivers from the wild. There is some discussion that the lined cross river puffer could be a fahaka-pustulatus hybrid occuring in the river. I lean more on the side of thise being females based on my still limited experience with puffers. I intend to determine that for myself at somepoint in the future :). ****The GIF behavior comparisons**** Cross river puffers :never did real damage (no fin tears etc). This clip yhry didnt actually touch. The behavior here was more often as they grew and occured between all 4 cross river males in the 270 gallon. I added tones of plants and made feeding stations out of easy planters and amazon sword plants. That bought me enough time to decide they were all males. This may also be food aggression (the snails on the bottom). The most frequent conspecific aggression between the 4 was dueing feedings but as they matured it was when any of the four caught sight of eachother. This is much like ehat i caught from two of my 4 adult spotted congos in their qt tank on arrival. I assessed this to be related to tank space more than anything in this 20 gallon. These two and 2 more i assume the cross river is a bigger more territorial and food aggressive version of these. Here is as close to that charging behavior as I have seen in my colonys of (Pao baileyi) hairy puffers Vs an adult male displaying to an adult female in front of his cave Pao palustris spawning behaviors F1 male left F1 female right Pao "exported as abei" male in cave female about to join him Pao leiurus male emerges behind female The male female dynamic is more of display mock charge vs the male male aggression in the cross rivers. The way i read the behaviors they more driving away competition, defending food, and area than finding a mate in the group .

This project has become a growing this cross river up. Im not to sure ill find another to pair but its been pretty fun so far. Tonights feeding was Eco fresh Dubia roaches. The "fresh" packaged bugs are popular with this puffer...... and the hundreds of cuban limia in the 270 with him. I always try for livebearers in with the puffers to handle the messy eating the limia vittata seem to be doing great here so far. They have been even better than the variatus platy for me. My current palustrus feeding rotation : "Fresh packaged": dubia roaches, superworms, soldierfly larvae Frozen foods : clams, raw whole crayfish, tilapia strips The rest: ramshorn snails, trapdoor snails, mystery snails, earthworms

Cleaned up the glass on the spotted congo puffer adult colony 40 breeder ....then gave them a bit of a MTS and ramshorn meal Also cleaned off the front glass of the 270 pond for the hold back cross river and his large colony of cuban limia. Probugs ecofresh dubia roaches are a hit with this puffer. The superworm version and soldier fly version also are eaten.

Thanks @Chick-In-Of-TheSea. @MandatoryDenialPictures and a gif would be cool to see of Trouble and his adventures. I havent noticed any spotted congo hunting and eating fish personally here though the will take frozen tilapia occasionally. It is worms, snails, misc insects, occasional shrimp and krill...exhibit A snails are their favorite here even as fry as evidenced by the field of pond snail shells. Your puffer should be decent at the hunt to get to their current size.... even tiny spotted congos are very good at it Since the adults here will eat frozen tilapia occasionally ....i suppose "food is food" if hungry enough and Trouble decides that guppies are better to have over "for dinner" than to dinner