Red Tailed Red Eyed Puffer

Care

The Red Tailed Red Eyed Puffer is very much a freshwater fish and wild habitats are usually soft and acidic forest streams, where these fish are found in the shelter of marginal vegetation. This provides a complex environment where these reasonably sociable puffers can easily escape conflict with rivals.

Like their relatives the Pygmy puffer (C. travancoricus) this species can be kept in small groups within a good sized aquarium furnished with a large number of visual barriers in the form of bogwood and plants, which they will enjoy exploring. Males are territorial and in small aquaria are best housed away from one another, alongside a number of females. A soft, sandy substrate will allow the puffers to bury themselves if alarmed and makes for easier siphoning of debris related to a diet of snails and shelled foods. Like all freshwater puffers, this fish is at its best in a species tank but in the right set up fast-swimming short-finned fish, such as some of the members of the barb, rasbora and tetra families, are usually quite safe. Note that compatible species can be a nuisance at feeding time, as they're easily capable of beating the puffers to their favoured foods. Good filtration and frequent partial water changes are a must.

This is a similar-looking species to the Red Eyed or Red Bellied Puffer (C. lorteti) but it is more colourful, attains a slightly smaller adult size, and is less aggressive towards its own kind.

Feeding

Meaty frozen foods such as brineshrimp, Mysis shrimp, mosquito larvae, chopped cockle and mussel meat, chopped shell-on prawns, small snails etc. Hard-shelled foods should be offered on a regular basis to help keep the beak in check.

Breeding

This species has been bred in the home aquarium. The male will swim around the female in a lengthy and elaborate courtship ritual with his dorsal and ventral ridges erect. The eggs are released by the female over a pre determined site (such as a clump of Java moss) and the male simultaneously fertilises them. No parental care is given by either sex. The eggs can be expected to hatch within 72 hours, and after a further 48 hours will become free-swimming. Newly hatched brineshrimp is too large for the tiny fry, so other miniscule foods such as microworms must be sourced beforehand.