We went down to our local fish store (LFS) but they didn't seem to have any in. So we started talking to the owner and he confessed that he had a couple but they had come from a home where they weren't properly cared for and he had worked hard to make them healthy and he wanted to make sure they went to a good home. I've spent the past two months studying puffers to make sure that I know what I was doing so he seemed to trust me and sold them to me.

The person who had owned them before had kept the poor guys in a fresh water tank so I had to spend the first couple of hours slowly introducing water from my tank into the water they had come from. They seemed to take to it well enough so I decided to introduce them into the tank.

Much to my surprise my Bumble Bee Catfish (who had been sold to me by the same strore and was supposed to be non-aggressive) became very territorial and started chasing them around the tank. He settled down but he's not happy to have tank-mates. I thought my wife and I had spoiled him too much over the past two months. The larger of the two puffers has been doing the up and down motion in front of the tank almost non-stop and the smaller doesn't seem to want to "escape" but he's really stressed and keeps changing colors.

11/25/02 - The tank included just a couple of large rocks with little caves to hide in but there wasn't enough places for everyone to call their own. Since they seemed unhappy with their new home we decided to go out and buy new rocks so that everybody could have their favorite place to hide. This proved stressfull for everyone. The cat (who lost his old cave) is now sulking in a corner and the puffers don't seem very interested at all in the new rocks. Very disapointing.

11/26/02 - The new cave that we bought for the catfish has turned out to be a hit. He really seems to like it and appears to be spending all of his time there. The way it's facing keeps him out of sun light but allows the brine shrimp to flow into his cave. The puffers don't seem to be happier though. They look sicker, so we bought medicine to cure fin and tail rot. Their's are looking really bad!

11/27/02 - Feeding has been interesting too. Apparently the old owner only fed the puffers flake food. Which is a very poor diet. We tried to start them off with frozen brine shrimp but they weren't interested in it at all. So for the first night I put some flake food in and they ate a little. So the next day I went and got some live blood worms. That worked like a charm and they ate to their hearts content. Some of the worms went down into the rocks and hide from the puffers (they seem to last a couple of days and then rot which can or cannot be good for the tank). That is proving to be entertaining though, the puffers keep hunting for them. It's cute and intertaining to watch them trying to find them. But my cat is still sulking and not interested in eating at the moment.

11/29/02 - The larger of the two puffer fish died over the night. It turns out that we made a very big mistake. After searching through sites it appears that BumbleBee Catfish are very agressive to any fish that it is bigger than. Our LFS recommended this fish to us!!! We are very unhappy and because of the thanksgiving weekend we couldn't get him out of our main tank. We didn't have a back up! We didn't want to just put him in a bag which could kill him so we left him in and he killed our puff! I have to work today so I went to a LFS that was close to work so that I could get a 3 gallon tank and a heater to put the cat in until I can talk to someone.

11/30/02 - So I took our Bumble-Bee Catfish down to our LFS and I was shocked by the owner's response. He didn't remember me!!! After a long lecture about making sure that I took good care of his puffers and warning me that my catfish that his assistant had sold me would be eaten by the puffer's, when I explained to him what had happened he didn't believe me! I explained what I had read about Bumble-Bee Catfish and he didn't believe me! He claimed that they weren't that agreesive and until I went into great detail didn't even remember selling me the puffers!!! He did take the catfish back though and we went to a different store and bought some Ramshorn Snails to live in the new tank so that they could bread to feed our puffer.

2/16/03 - Much has occured since my last recording.  We tried raising Ramshorn Snails to feed our puffer with but they eat so much and it makes the tank really dirty.  It was a full time job to keep it clean so I gave up.  We got one successful breeding of babies to feed our puff, which he loved but then I called it quits.  Now I just buy snails when I can find them at the LFS.

We are currently setting up the 3 gallon tank to keep a couple of dwarf puffers.  We hope it'll be ready by the end of March.  Our puff has been doing very well in the tank by himself.  He eats well and plays alot.  We've been so happy that he has recoved from the bad beginning.  We've learned alot about keeping puffers.  We feed him live brine shrimp and live blood worms mostly.  But we buy live ghost shrimp too and let them live in the tank until he catches them.  It's been very entertaining to watch him try to catch them.  They are very fast and it's not easy for him.  But we just discovered that he has caught worms from the ghost shrimp.  It's easy to tell with them since the worms grow out of their bodies.  So tomorrow I have to buy medicine and start the treatment.

Atleast the past 2 ½ months have been event free.