Porcupine puffer from the wild +

[Amazz]

I just acquired a tiny 1" puffer collected near a marina in some sargassum. OMG! So cute. There were some tiny shrimp in the weeds and he ate some in the bucket.

Now he's in my tank and getting acclimated. He's not in the top corner as much but exploring and hiding in various places in the rocks.

I feed my fish spectrum pellets. So far he hasn't taken any. I'm not worried yet, because he just had the shrimp he came with 5 days ago. My wild lionfish went for 3 weeks without eating.

Will he ever take the pellets? When should I worry? Will live brine shrimp work, or live freshwater ghost shrimp? I can get those in my yard. Problem with live food is that my psycho yellow head wrasse attacks everything I throw in as live food. He'll keep eating shrimp until they just stick outside of his mouth. I need to get rid of that jerk. But he is entertaining. I can wait until he goes to bed to throw the live food in. The belted sand fish does the same thing and gobbles everything.

Just hoping my puffer will be ok and will eat. Suggestions?

 

[Northstar24]

You do realize your tank is half the size needed for a porcupine puffer right? Now that you pulled it out of the ocean you can't put it back

 

[Amazz]

Not thinking about that at the moment because I'm upgrading to a 300 in a year or so. Right now, it's an inch. Any recommendations?

 

[Bifferwine]

That's very small for that fish. The smaller they are, the more difficult they are to care for. Since it is used to only eating live foods, you may have to work to train it to prepared foods. For one, ditch the pellets and switch to frozen food. It might not even recognize pellets as food -- at least frozen foods look and taste more like what they are used to (and are healthier too). Try some frozen mysis or Marine Cuisine.

 

[Amazz]

I'll try my best. The fish was collected in a very busy boat area in brackish water. We had some sargassum float in. He was in oily water, what a shame.

 

[Amazz]

Puffer ate tonight!! Yeah! I was feeding my snowflake and put a tiny piece of fish on a bamboo skewer. My inch long puffer went over and munched on it. I'm so thrilled.

 

[Mr.Diggler]

Pics?

 

[spongeycrab]

When I get some money for a 200 gallon plan to get a porcupine they're awseome
and sooo cute um pics?

 

[nyquist]

I'm not the OP, but I have a related image! I caught this TINY porcupine puffer last week at the beach, hes was about one cm long and by far the cutest thing I saw at the beach :)

 

[Amazz]

I promise I'll post a pic when I get back from the Bahamas. Little puffer ate a live ghost shrimp from my fingers last night.