New Puffer Fish?

Question

I bought 2 leopard puffer fish and 1 figure 8 puffer and I have read all that I can find about them online. I was hoping that someone could give me more info(I like to know everything I can about my fish)A few things that I could not find were:
1. How to tell male from female?
2. How do they breed and when or what age?
3. Any other basic info that I might not have found online, things that are learned from personal experience?

Answer 1

1. You can't tell the difference between boys and girls. There are no external differences. Only the puffers know for sure!

2. If you breed these fish in captivity please let everyone know how you did it. They're all wild caught because they won't mate outside of their natural habitat.

3. From personal experience, you've got to grow your own snails to feed these guys. They need crunchy food to keep their teeth from growing too long. Get a big bucket and fill it up with water. Go to the fish store and buy a bunch of elodea and ask the clerk if you can take home some pond snails. Put the plants and snails in the bucket and put it in an out of the way place with natural lighting. If you live in a warmer climate you can keep it on your back porch. I used to keep mine in the laundry room during the winter, but only because I don't like sticking my arm in freezing cold water. The snails will multiply like crazy, just give them a little fish food or algae waffers daily and do a partial water change every so often. Give the puffers as many snails as they can eat as often as possible. You'll have to clean out the crunched up snail shells when you clean the tank but it's not that hard. Just make sure you keep feeding the puffers their regular frozen/live food because snails don't have much nutritional value. A warning - don't ever put any of those snails in regular aquarium. You will never, ever be able to get rid of them.

Answer 2

Apart from the info in the first answer, figure eight puffers need low salinity brackish water, but green spotted (what you're calling leopards) need almost marine conditions by the time they're adults, so you won't be able to keep them together indefinitely - they'll need tanks according to species to meet the water conditions each needs - and fairly soon. These fish won't live long if you try to keep them in freshwater. They are territorial fish and will get aggressive as they mature, so shouldn't have any tankmates.

There have been "reports" of breeding, but nothing well documented. It's possible that a salinity change is needed to have sucessful spawning, since the juveniles are more tolerant of freshwater.

Another consideration is water quality. All puffers are sensitive to ammonia and nitrite, so they should only be added to a tank that's been cycled (has bacteria built up to convert harmful ammonia and nitrie from your fishs' wastes to less harmful nitrate) If you see the fish "gasping" at the top for air, or turning dark in color, these are signs of stress.

Answer 3

became the sea coast at a lake or on the sea? If a lake became it brackish or clean water? What us of a? that would not look like a eco-friendly observed Puffer to me in any respect. it would make it a splash greater elementary for us to perceive it if we knew those few issues.