What Can You Put With A Green Spotted Puffer Fish?
I have 2, 1 inch green spotted puffer fish in my 20 gallon tank. Salinity is 10. I feed them a frozen cube of blood worms for breakfast, they have ghost shrimp all over to eat randomly, and in the afternoon I offer them a little bit of freeze-dried brine shrimp.
My fish are so small at the moment, they do not finish off all of 1 frozen blood worm cube. I end up needing to scoop the rest out with a net so the filter isn’t overloaded. My question, is what type of fish, or other animal can I put in the tank that will eat up the scraps at 10 salinity (which will be increased to 15 shortly)?
If the puffers will kill whatever I put in there, that is fine too. If a rosey would eat the scraps, but get killed, I don’t mind getting one each time the first is kill and replace it. They are so cheap it doesn’t matter.
Or is there some other type of fish or crustacean I could rely on? I have seen hermit crabs in full marine tanks. Ar they cleaners? If so can they live in a salinity of 15? I have no intention of converting the tank over to full marine till the fish are closer to 3 1/2 – 4 inches each.
Also, I have been keeping fish for 20+ years. I don’t need any lectures on water conditions, salt, blah blah blah. I’m asking what type of animals can clean up after my fish in a salinity of 10-15, that is all. And yes, 20 gallons is too small for 2 green spotted puffers if they were full grown. But as they are both only 1 inch each, this tank is far more than sufficient until they are each at least 4 inches, and I will be getting rid of one by the time they reach that length.
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You can find several types of gobies, which does well under brackish condition.
Several species of mollies are actually found in brackish waters in the wild.
Monodactylus argenteus (silver moony), Scatophagus argus (scats) as well as Toxotes sp. (archer fish) do well in brackish water too, but would require a little more room.
One final thought. Puffers tend to be really bad fin nippers. This may be controlled by making sure that they always have sufficient amounts of snails to eat, but it’s by no means certain, that it’ll work.
Very few fish can be safely housed with GSPs. The first concern would be tank size, unless you have a very large tank, tank mates should not be attempted. GSPs are notorious “fin nippers” and won’t hesitate to attack even much larger fish. There has been some success housing them with Tomato Clown fish in large Marine tanks.
You could try a few bumblebee gobies.