Need some stocking advice

[Tweeetly]

I want to do a 10 gallon pea puffer tank and was wondering if i could put 4-5 pygmy corys in there with the puffers?

[Zenzo]

There was a recent thread about stocking pea puffers in a 10 gallon tank. You can find some answers in that thread. 

 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

It's 50/50, peas can be a@#holes and you just never know. I would introduce the pygmys first, make sure they have cover and plenty of places to hide. Pea puffers are very curious and they are bound to run into the corys. When that happens the personality of the puff will come out. You should keep a cycled tank ready to rehome either group. 

I would not do any less than 6 corys as well. 

[Karen B.]

On 2/7/2022 at 2:02 PM, Zenzo said:

There was a recent thread about stocking pea puffers in a 10 gallon tank. You can find some answers in that thread. 

 

@Zenzo

Can I bug you to actually adress the 2nd part of my question :

   On 1/30/2022 at 5:25 PM,  Zenzo said: 

If you only want one, just keep one. You can always provide enrichment by offering foods that it can hunt (worms, small snails, etc.). You could also have other compatible fish in that tank. 

@Zenzo
Thanks!

But from the fish’s point of view, what would be the ideal situation in a 10 gallons?! Are they social?

[Zenzo]

On 2/7/2022 at 3:41 PM, Karen B. said:

@Zenzo

Can I bug you to actually adress the 2nd part of my question :

 

   On 1/30/2022 at 5:25 PM,  Zenzo said: 

If you only want one, just keep one. You can always provide enrichment by offering foods that it can hunt (worms, small snails, etc.). You could also have other compatible fish in that tank. 

@Zenzo
Thanks!

But from the fish’s point of view, what would be the ideal situation in a 10 gallons?! Are they social?

I have yet to finish my brain wave transmitter that allows me to ask the fish their points of view as to what they like.

All joking aside, I say that you should create the tank and stock it the way that YOU will find it most enjoyable as well as what is best for the fish health (what you are able to observe and measure). Ultimately, keeping a pea puffer in glass box is not natural, so it is hard to determine what is optimal as far as the enrichment of the fish's life. 

[Streetwise]

I haven’t yet kept Pea Puffers, but I did keep a marine Porcupine Puffer. It was a water pup, and thrived with interaction. I fed it freeze-dried shrimp by hand, and I could pet it. I was gifted a marine tank when I was living in Boulder, since I was the only friend who knew aquariums.

I think I kept every fish from Finding Nemo, except for Willem Defoe.

(Edit: no whales or marine sharks!)

[Karen B.]

On 2/7/2022 at 6:45 PM, Zenzo said:

I have yet to finish my brain wave transmitter that allows me to ask the fish their points of view as to what they like.

All joking aside, I say that you should create the tank and stock it the way that YOU will find it most enjoyable as well as what is best for the fish health (what you are able to observe and measure). Ultimately, keeping a pea puffer in glass box is not natural, so it is hard to determine what is optimal as far as the enrichment of the fish's life. 

Hehe. You are not the Fish’ whisperer?! 😝

[Torrey]

@mountaintoppufferkeeper has a journal full of observations on puffers @Karen B.

I have not kept puffers, I prefer to watch other people's puffers so that I don't have to worry about the novela they sometimes like to create. I know of several people who have ended up having to keep their puffers solo, and they all said the same thing: they are called murder beans for a reason and they didn't get their puffers young enough to learn how to get along.

Based on what I know of fish, and psychology in general, if community fish are unable to be reintroduced into a community as adults, the isolation stage changed something/ was scary and generates a self-protection response.

We actually see the same thing in bettas, and especially betta females. You can have an outdoor pond in Malaysia with multiple generations of male and female bettas living pretty happily together and they will come to you for food. Can't recreate that in a fish tank, though.

From what I observed working in a fish room at a pet store, pea puffers are happier (which I determined by overall health and susceptibility to opportunistic diseases) in groups. They are very interactive, and water puppies is a pretty accurate description. 

Just like puppies (and teenagers), when sexual maturity begins there will be a lot of interactions between the puffers to establish a hierarchy. This is when the murder bean comes out in some puffers, and I have no clue how to know beforehand who is going to try and murder a tank mate. 

Hence the recommendation from @Beardedbillygoat1975 to always have an extra tank cycled and ready, or keep an extra sponge filter in your tank to use in case you need emergency separation.

General rule of thumb regarding stocking, is 5 gallons for first pea puffer, and 2-3 gallons each additional. 

Cories get very stressed and become more susceptible to opportunistic diseases any time they are in groups smaller than 6.

These recommendations are based off of people observing fish behavior, and specifically observing what is needed for fish health since none of us speak fish yet. Observation is the best we can do.