I Want Pea Puffers - I Got Questions (Oh, So Many Questions)

[FLFishChik]

So, for long time now, I have dreamt of keeping Pea Puffers ( I mean, who wouldn't want to keep pack of adorable little water Chihuahuas?) and I am in the beginning stages of planning everything out to make that dream happen. I want to establish either a 20g or 29g  planted tank, (mostly) Specimen only tank, but will need some sort of clean up crew. However, I've read sooo many article and watched sooo many YouTube videos on Pea Puffers and their needs, that a lot of it is conflicting. So, I thought I would ask some of the experienced Pea Puffer keepers here. I want to be as good a 'Puffer Parent' from the start as I can.

1) Plants -What sort of plants are best suited to a Pea Puffer tank?

2) Hardscape- Would Spider wood be ok? What type of rock?

3) Substatrate - would a smooth pea pebble-like gravel be ok?

4) Snails -Do they actually need to eat snails and if so... which type of snail is the best suited? How many snails does a Pea Puffer eat at one sitting? How often do they eat snails per week? If I decide to farm my own snails, is that realistic?

5) Other live foods - I know they love the Blood worms, but what about Grindal worms, White worms, black worms?

6) Can they eat freeze dried foods? Do any freeze dried or frozen foods meet the "crunchy" requirement for their teeth/beak?

7) Clean up crew - what sort of clean up crew would be compatible with Pea Puffers?

8.) How many Pea Puffers can I safely keep in a 20g or 29g?

  I'm sure I will have many, many more questions before I finally bring home my prized little Puffers, which will not be soon - I have plenty of time, but I think those are the most important ones I have for the moment.

 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I have my 29g Pea Puffer tank. I’ll do my best to answer your questions and remember this is just my personal experience. 
 

1. Any and all plants that do well in your water. 
2. I love Spiderwood and have it in all of my tanks. Pea Puffer tank is no exception. 
3. Dealers choice on the gravel. I used the leftover gravel and sand I had. Wish my tank was all gravel as it’s my favorite, but I didn’t want to buy more when I had enough of 2 different things to suffice. 
4. I think they’re necessary. Can we survive on only cheeseburgers? Probably. Is it the best for us? No. A varied diet is always best. Snails are great for puffers. 
     -I feed snails when I have too many. Both pond and Ramshorn snails. I’ve been purposely building up snails and look forward to feeding them more often. It’s realistic, just takes time. 
5. I don’t have any worm cultures, but if I did I would absolutely be feeding them to the Pea Puffers. Bloodworms and snails are what mine get. 
6. Can they? Sure! Will they? You’ll have to see if your will. One of the best parts of Pea Puffers is that they don’t have ever-growing beaks/teeth that need to be constantly ground down like other puffers. 
7. Good luck with a clean up crew. Maybe Amano shrimp? Maybe larger snails? I kept mine successfully with neo shrimp for a long time, but after a whole the neo population stagnated and started to decline as the shrimplets were all being hunted. My Pea Puffer tank has made me focus more on a balance and the occasional manual algae scrub as shrimp will survive but not thrive and snails are food. 
8. I keep 6 in a 29 no problem. I often think about getting up to 10 or 12 just to see, but then I get hesitant to break something that was working perfectly. 
 

Just my 2 cents and what I’ve done/what has worked for me. If you have any questions send me a message!

[FLFishChik]

@AllFishNoBrakes thank you for your response! Very helpful!

[The endler guy]

On 12/28/2022 at 10:01 PM, FLFishChik said:

So, for long time now, I have dreamt of keeping Pea Puffers ( I mean, who wouldn't want to keep pack of adorable little water Chihuahuas?) and I am in the beginning stages of planning everything out to make that dream happen. I want to establish either a 20g or 29g  planted tank, (mostly) Specimen only tank, but will need some sort of clean up crew. However, I've read sooo many article and watched sooo many YouTube videos on Pea Puffers and their needs, that a lot of it is conflicting. So, I thought I would ask some of the experienced Pea Puffer keepers here. I want to be as good a 'Puffer Parent' from the start as I can.

1) Plants -What sort of plants are best suited to a Pea Puffer tank?

2) Hardscape- Would Spider wood be ok? What type of rock?

3) Substatrate - would a smooth pea pebble-like gravel be ok?

4) Snails -Do they actually need to eat snails and if so... which type of snail is the best suited? How many snails does a Pea Puffer eat at one sitting? How often do they eat snails per week? If I decide to farm my own snails, is that realistic?

5) Other live foods - I know they love the Blood worms, but what about Grindal worms, White worms, black worms?

6) Can they eat freeze dried foods? Do any freeze dried or frozen foods meet the "crunchy" requirement for their teeth/beak?

7) Clean up crew - what sort of clean up crew would be compatible with Pea Puffers?

8.) How many Pea Puffers can I safely keep in a 20g or 29g?

  I'm sure I will have many, many more questions before I finally bring home my prized little Puffers, which will not be soon - I have plenty of time, but I think those are the most important ones I have for the moment.

 

I mean the master of puffers ( @Cory) could help clear up the teeth thing

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

No teeth issues. They can be picky about food and tankmates.

Ideally the tankmates will be in the tank well before the peas so they can settle in. However, no guarantees. Mine did fine with the Amanos for 2-3 weeks then went absolutely agro and killed them all 5 amanos vs 3 pea puffers. It was ugly. However, they’ve taken no interest in the otos or Coryadoras habrosus. 
 

I feed them baby pond and ramshorns. They crush them. Blood worms. They will try tubifex but I think the habrosus chow those more than the peas. 
 

They love all plants and hard scape and need a challenging scape that will give them enrichment. I have a trio 1 male 2 females in a 12 g bowl.  Aquasoil, gravel and sand. Under gravel filter. CO2. 

still working on balancing the system. Added the houseplants to see if they can be a slow mop of the excess to keep the hair algae at bay. 

[binkysmom]

I think some of these things depend on the puffer in question. I have mine (a single rescue) in a 22 long with cories, exclamation point rasboras and blue dream shrimp. I've never seen him go after the shrimp. One scrambled over his head the other day and he didn't do a thing. He gets fed snails and frozen food (blood worms and brine shrimp). In the summer he gets mosquito larvae as well. 

[Schuyler]

On 12/28/2022 at 7:54 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

Good luck with a clean up crew

Pea puffers can be feisty (or so I've heard) but if the other fish was significantly larger, like a bristlenose pleco, would the puffer still bully it?

What if you did something like a bamboo or vampire shrimp?

[The endler guy]

On 12/29/2022 at 2:37 PM, Schuyler said:

Pea puffers can be feisty (or so I've heard) but if the other fish was significantly larger, like a bristlenose pleco, would the puffer still bully it?

What if you did something like a bamboo or vampire shrimp?

Filter feeding shrimp would be terrible for clean up crew, I love them but they are practically the opposite you need lots of particles in the water for them to be healthy, also they have delicate fans

would large snails work as a clean up crew? Could crabs or Amanos work

[FLFishChik]

Would they be ok with corydoras or oto’s?

[Matt B]

We have two in a 10 gal planted tank. Vallisneria, Amazon Sword and Pogostemon Stellatus Octopus. As far as we can tell,  they are females, but they are still growing. Sometimes they get along hovering around together and other times they start a crazy game of chase until they loose site of each other.

Their food consists of blood worms,.. scuds and pond snails, that we have growing in a 4 gal.  And recently we discovered they love freshly hatched live brine shrimp! So cool to watch them peck at them. Gulp! 

Haven't tried them with tank mates,  after hearing them called ' Murder Beans' ,  We decided it should just be a puffer tank!  😄

They are truly a unique fish.

Sometimes, the way they stare back at us, can be a little creepy! 😄

[mynameisnobody]

@FLFishChik I had a 40 gallon with a little army of pea puffers. I loved them, however it was very difficult to keep an eco system sustainable. They are little helicopter predators. They eliminated snails, shrimp (neo’s and Amano’s), a pleco, corydoras, and then I stopped trying. They are highly entertaining and are very fun to keep in a species only. This is just my experience. You can also check out aquarium coops video on pea puffers, it’ll basically tell you everything you need to know. 
PS any and all plants will most likely work. Good luck 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Puffers are very intelligent. They have personalities and quirks. This leads to a couple things - they can become obsessive about a certain spot or object in the tank and when something takes an interest in said space/object they can get territorial. Sometimes it’s boredom - if they don’t have enough to interest them in the tank plant and hardscape-wise they can get hangry and take a bite out of things. Mine got a bite out of that first Amano the rest is history. The otos and the corys there have been no issues but I wouldn’t be surprised if that changed. 

Size does not matter - the amanos I had were over double if not triple the size of the puffers but once one got a hold on a shrimp the others joined in and learned they were food. Bye bye Amanos. 

[Matt B]

So we have a lot of Endler /Guppies.  So, we decided to add 4 to the 10 gal Pea Puffer tank to see what would happen.  🤔  The 2 Peas ( both females) started showing their colors and sticking close to each other. They really checked the newcomers out big time, however no aggressive behavior! I believe they were trying to determine if the Gups were a threat. So it's now been a week and everyone is getting  along great, basically ignoring each other.  Haveing heard all the horror stories we were pleasantly surprised. 

So far, So good. We will see how this works out over time. 🤞😁

[Tommy Vercetti]

My wife has 8 pea puffers in a tank with a lot of red cherry shrimp. No carnage to speak of.