Young Golden Puffer ?

[Juice It]

I decided to start another thread to ask if anyone here has or has seen small golden puffers or are they all Guinea Fowl puffers when small and change to yellow (only in the wild) when they reach 8-9 inches. Every Golden Puffer I find for sale anywhere is 8 inches or larger. Am I looking for something that does not exist?

 

[myerst2]

How small is small? Generally the all Gold color phase is either adult coloration or sub-adult coloration. I would say finding a gold puffer under 5" is very difficult to impossible. Tim

 

[FerrariStradale]

I've only seen gold about 7-8 inches.. like you said.

 

[bluedevils32701]

i have a 5-6 inch specimen. he is the smallest i have ever come across!

 

[Juice It]

Come to think of it I have never seen a less than 6 inch guineafowl either. Pretty strange considering all the other puffers I see come in some small sizes. Would getting an 8 inch Golden puffer be a mistake to go in with 3 3-4 inch triggers, a 4 inch wrasse, a small Lion and a couple small tangs and a small dogface?

 

[bluedevils32701]

for the most part puffers are pretty laid back except for feeding time. I don't think you will have a problem. I have 4 golden puffers in a 470 along with a small africanus angelfish, small blueface, clown trigger, a few polleni groupers and some dragon morays. they all get along for the most part (the eels do try to eat the smaller groupers and have succeeded in catching one!)

 

[elecbzerk]

i have one that I bought in June and he was 2", and golden.

 

[bluedevils32701]

any pics? 2" golden puffer! if true that would be an amazing site!

 

[LisaD]

I think elecbzerk's puffer is a dogface with some gold on it, Arothron nigropunctatus. Quite attractive, but I don't think the same as the "gold puffer" being discussed.

I have seen larger, more fully golden dogfaces, but all of them have been large.

The bright to pale yellow "gold puffer" people are discussing is Arothron meleagris, a different species.

 

[myerst2]

Lisa you confirmed just what I was going to say before i read your post. You will find Nigropunctus with partial gold but never gold like a melegris. Also the gold on a meleagris is like lisad's jacket(nice salmon by the way) , and nogropunctus is like a mustard. Tim

 

[LisaD]

Hey, Tim, that's no salmon, that's an Atlantic sharpnose shark! I went out on a university research boat two summers ago, shark tagging. We were doing a population survey.

This is the researcher I went with:
http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1131

This is the shark I'm holding:
http://new-brunswick.net/new-brunswick/sharks/species/sharpnose.html

 

[myerst2]

Oh great stuff, wow and some people say I know a thing or two about fish. Where did you catch the shark in the Red Sea??? J/K. On a fishing note, went this morning and the Stripers are starting their run from Montauk down the South Shore and I crushed them. Man I love fishing in September On Long Island 75F., no humidity, most importantly no people!!! Tim

 

[LisaD]

I like LI - I used to go to Cold Spring Harbor Lab every year on business in my other job. My dad used to go on bluefish trips to Montauk Point in the 60s and 70s. He's fill the back of his station wagon with ice and bring a mess of them home. I started getting interested in salt water animals because he'd bring things back for me like horseshoe crabs and sea spiders.

 

[T-T-Trigger]

Myerst, you confirmed what i was going to say before you said it before Lisa said it, before.... lol In ten years the smallest golden meleagris i have seen is about 6" and the smallest guineafowl meleagris was about 5".

I have seen a <3" panda however - awesome, more people should keep those.