keeping pea puffers as pets

[WildFins]

I'm thinking of a species only pea puffer tank. Anyone who keeps them, can I pick your brain with some questions?

[willie32]

I've not kept them but I keep their cousins Red Eye Red Tail Puffers. I put quite a bit of research in when deciding between the two so might be able to help

[cichlidgirl22]

Ask away.

[WildFins]

Ok first question. Plan is for a 20 long, heavily planted, sand substrate. What's a good number of puffers to put in there?

[WildFins]

And I'm assuming a higher number of females to males.

[willie32]

A rule of thumb I'd follow is generally one puffer per 10 litres so in 20us gallons you have about 75 litres so I'd go for 8 as they are a shoaling fish and need good numbers to maintain aggression.

Male to female ratios can really help the success of a group but... its not super easy to identify genders when they are young or stressed out in stores so don't beat yourself up if you get them home and its not exactly perfect ratios.

One thing people don't realise about Pea Puffers is that they come from quite hard water in the wild, ph does not need to be high but a gh of 10+ would be beneficial. I'm not sure of the effect of keeping them in softer water, in some larger fish you do get some growth issues but being small not sure it would be a problem.

willie32

[WildFins]

And feeding schedule. I know they can be finicky waters and won't eat regular pellets or flakes. I'm going to set up a snail tank for harvesting pest snails. I also currently feed live BBS and grindal worms. Mosquito larvae in the summer. Looking to set up a daphnia culture. I also can have frozen daphnia, brine shrimp and bloodworms on hand. Are there any other foods I should look into?
My routine for my fish now is feed once a day for two days and then a fasting day. Do I need to feed pea puffers more often?

[willie32]

Some will eat pellets and flake these days, they have been farmed for quite a few years now so possible to find ones that feed well. Otherwise you have a luxury buffet planned for them - with regards to snails they will typically only eat ones the size of their eye. My red eyes did used to eat every kind of snail but now only the small ones, I actually have some adult ramshorns living in their tank. Put in as youngsters as food but they have survived and grown and I now just see the puffers going for the young snails which are somewhat abundant... To supplement this I put in a blood worm cube for them 3-4 times a week which the 4 of them chase around and chomp at the block.

willie32