Dumb puffer ?

[firebrooks1]

I’m taking my first stab at owning a dog face puffer. I have a 135 gal for 3 years that is fowlr. I know that it will destroy my crab population, but want to know if I can add small fish for a clean up crew. I plan to over feed to see if that helps.

 

[reefergeorge]

My puffer ate all my fish that were under 1.5" when he was only five inches.
He doesn't bother my snails or a cleaner shrimp that has been with him over a year.
As long as it doesn't bother you if they get ate. Put them in. Over feeding him so he doesn't eat your fish is a bad idea that will lead to more problems than good.

 

[limitedslip]

Well, best thing to do is try, Try with something cheap, and worse case, you give you puffer a nice meal, if you try something more expensive and the dogface goes for it, itll be a bigger loss for the same experiment. I have a lawnmower blenny with a Stars+Stripes and Porc puffer, and it has been working fine for the last few months.

You said that puffers destroy crabs, but have you tried adding a few hermits and snails to the tank? I have an army of hermits and snails (30+ of each) and they havent been touched by either of my puffers, and some of hte shells are small enough to fit in my puffers mouths.

 

[firebrooks1]

Thank you. That will be even better if it doesn't eat my crabs. I was told that it would eat them by the lfs and a friend that had one. But like every thing else, they have there own personality. I'll try with cheap fish first and see how that goes.

 

[julianp]

Another thing to consider is lots of the sort of inverts that breed heavily/constantly and spend a lot of time around/in the rockwork. Some of the snails from Project DIBS or things like bristleworms/amphipods/spaghetti worms.

This has worked well for me to keep the rockwork itself spick-and-span and for sand-sifting I have a giant (3"), intimidating hermit crab who keeps the sand in my 90G FOWLR constantly looking like someone "raked" it. The first day I dropped him in the tank, my 5" porcupine puffer swam up to him and they literally stared each-other down eye-to-eye. The puffer gave up after about 10 seconds and swam away. Now he sleeps next to the crab. Go figure.

 

[LisaD]

I have a dogface puffer, two eels (including a large zebra moray), pinktail trigger, and grouper in a tank with one large-ish hermit crab that has been cleaning up since last June. No one bothers him. Since I collected him myself at the beach in NC, no huge loss if he gets eaten, but I've had him long enough that I'll miss him if he gets taken out. I feed the tank well, so no one is desperate for food...