dwarf puffers?

Question

why havent my pair of dwarf puffers killed my neon tetra yet i thought they were supposed to be aggresive and kill the neon but after three weks he remains untouched, not that thats a bad thing but why
?

but they try to bite my finger whenever i put it in the tank


and it hurt never doing that again

Answer 1

You may have gotten lucky and your puffers are a little less aggressive than usual. Or they simply haven't gotten hungry enough or had a good opportunity to eat your neon tetra. They will probably want to but I'm sure you've noticed that their cute bumble bee swimming is not very fast at all. They rely on opportunity to catch faster prey. Then again, some puffers just aren't that interested in eating fish. Fish are not their natural diet - yummy, slow-moving snails are what dwarf puffers naturally crave.

You can keep their teeth ground down by feeding them raw, human grade cocktail shrimp with the shell on and fresh mussels and clams from the grocery case - just a teeny bit, don't leave them unsupervised or they'll gorge themselves, possibly to death. Live ghost shrimp are also a great treat for them. Perhaps if you invest in some live ghost shrimp it will give your dwarf puffers something else (from their natural and desirable diet) to chase and perhaps catch and eat. A few largist snails may survive and lay yummy eggs for your puffers, too. Also, a heavily decorated tank with plenty of hiding spaces is good for your puffers whether they have tankmates or not.

Answer 2

the DPs love to nip at slow moving fish. they aren't the rampant killers that these people seem to think they are. i have a male and female pair that have bred before... though the rasboras ate most of the fry. i first got them for my 2.5 planted tank. i had them in there with a male and femal guppy. they did fine but the male chased the female (puffers that is) a little initially. i then moved them to my 25 gallon "small fish" community with neons, glass cats, cories, gold barbs, otos and chain loaches. the only things that got picked on were the otos and cories. even then it was just little fin nipping. DPs are some of the cleanest fish i've ever seen! my other fish will spit out some food, but the DPs just take whole bloodworms without fuss. i've also never seen a dookie hanging off my puffers before, ever, as i have with every other fish i've ever owned (has to be way over 80 species and 500 specimens) they now reside in a 10 gallon with a 2'' striped raph catfish, and 4 harlequin rasboras. the rasboras are bigger Aholes than the DPs, i'm really thinking about removing them and getting some more neons/cardinals. in a 6.5 you could do either or but definatle not both, the DP will nip the betta unmercifully. DP's go throught the entire tank at least 5 times daily. and no puffers aren't labyrinth fishes.

Answer 3

It sounds like they are still juveniles. As they mature, they will begin to slowly pick of one Neon at a time until it is just the two Puffers left. When this happens, unless your tank is very well planted, the Puffers will begin to go after each other. Be sure to give them plenty of hiding spots so they don't kill each other.

Nosoop4u

Answer 4

Truthfully, you are fairly lucky...you can research and read all you want and you will read the same things, but sometimes it just plain and simply comes down to the attitude of that fish. I have seen odd mixes in tanks work before, it all depends on the fish..And I guess you got setup with some nice puffers haha.

Answer 5

I agree with the first answer, a lot of it is personality of the individual fish. Or, your neon is just a quick swimmer :)

Answer 6

because they're still to small to do so, or their teeth are to long. you need to supplement them with snails on their diet

read the following
http://fishlesscycling.com/articles/dwarf_puffers.html



Hope that helps
Good luck


EB