My Mappa is always brown, black and white

[FishyMel]

I purchased a 4 inch juevnille mappa puffer about a year ago at my lfs. At the time he was bright yellow, tan and white and stayed that way for about 9 monthes, but I've been noticing in the passed couple of monthes that he is stays black and white on his belly and almost completly brown and black on his top with no yellow what so ever. He is about 9 inches now and is in a 150 tank fowlr and a purple tang, blue spot toby, russel's lionfish, yellow milliaris eel and a large orange hermit crab. He is constantly eating mysis shrimp, silversides, and krill and swims around the tank. He has never came down with any diseases either besides ich. Does anyone have an idea why he always brown and black?

 

[Puffer Queen]

The yellow coloring is a juvenile coloring/pattern. The brown/black & white is one of the adult morphs. Unfortunately the bright yellow does not stay into adulthood. It sounds like he is thriving and will soon need a bigger tank

There are some arothron stellatus that do keep their yellow juvenile coloring but these puffer grow to 3+ feet and are the most aggressive of the arothrons.

Best of luck with your arothron mappa.

Kelly

 

[FishyMel]

So how come this mappa below looks porportionally alot bigger than mine but still has yellow. My mappa looks alot darker than that and has no yellow at all.

 

[Puffer Queen]

Different morphs have different patterns & shades. I have seen the gamut of colors and patterns in mappas.

It is hard to tell the size of the puffer from the pic. Also this puffer may not be a mature adult yet. Different fish/puffers mature at different rates.

Kelly

 

[FindingSalt]

what size tank do you really need to keep a mappa? just out of curiousity didnt mean to jack the thread.

 

[Deacon]

Also, when you are looking at photos of fish (or any photos for that matter), you need to remember that amazing things can be done with Photoshop and other photo editing software...

 

[Puffer Queen]

A minimum tank size of 240 gallon (per Scott Michael & my own personal experience). This puffer can grow over 25 inches and about half that wide - similar to a football.

Kelly

 

[FishyMel]

We keep ours in a 150 that has an additional 20 in the sump and another 20 in a refugium for around 200 total water gallonage. We also only keep 4 fish in the aquarium.