Will Pea Puffers Eat Guppy Fry?

[ChrisD]

I'm thinking of getting a pea puffer in it's own 7.1 gallon tank. I'm also thinking about how to cope with the massive amount of fry my female guppy spits out in a different tank.

The pea puffer is a carnivore. Get where I am going with this? Okay, okay... Will the pea puffer take the fry off my hands and can that be it's main source of nutrition?

[gardenman]

Pretty much any fish of decent size will eat pretty much any other fish that will fit into its mouth. Some are more aggressive than others, but they'll all eat them if they can catch them halfway easily. Puffers have teeth though and that's the problem with them. They wear down their teeth by eating hard, crunchy stuff like snails, clams, mussels, etc. Guppy fry tend not to be hard and crunchy. That would mean your puffer would have its teeth overgrow and become a problem. Arguably the best option for a guppy fry eater is an angelfish. They don't get enormous and have big appetites. (Though they can get pretty darn big.) Predatory cichlids like Oscars or Jack Dempseys would gorge on guppy fry also, but once they get bigger they tend to look for chunkier meals like the parent guppies, which also solves the guppy fry problem, just not necessarily in the right way. Angelfish, even large ones, have smaller mouths and tend to hunt the smaller prey rather than the adult guppies, but if one happened too close and was small enough to eat, well... gulp.

[JaredL]

@gardenmanI was under the impression pea puffers don't need to wear down their teeth like other puffers

[gardenman]

24 minutes ago, JaredL said:

@gardenmanI was under the impression pea puffers don't need to wear down their teeth like other puffers

There's a lot of conflicting information out there on that. Multiple sites say their four teeth grow just like any other puffer and they need hard foods to wear them down. Other sites say it's not an issue with pea puffers. I'd err on the side of caution and feed mine harder stuff in the form of snails and whatnot to be safe.

[Bru]

I've kept mine with endler fry in the past and they seemed to ignore them. Maybe because they're spoiled with snails and bloodworms but I get the feeling they'd starve themselves before they caught enough fry to make a difference. I think the fry are more likely to grow up and get nipped to death.

[b_ball34]

I dont think a pea puffer would be able to eat even a newborn guppy. They have really small mouths they may beat on them and slowly kill them but I dont think it would eat it. And in my experience they dont need hard things to file down teeth. Mine always loved snails but they dont bite the shell they suck em out.