Tips for Keeping the Lurker Puffers
Freshwater Puffers that Ambush Their Prey
A lurker puffer is any puffer that ambushes its prey by lying in wait, rather than actively hunting. These puffers may not move for days waiting for the perfect meal to come by. Lurker puffers include the Arrowhead Puffer (T. suvattii), the Congo Puffer (T. miurus), the Palembang Puffer (T. palembangensis) and several others. They tend to grow quite large, with these three reaching 6 to 8 inches at full grown.
Tank Needs for Lurker Puffers
These puffers will do fine in a 30 gallon fresh water tank, since they are not very active as they mature. The tank should be well decorated to provide plenty of cover for the puffers to hide in as they lie in wait for their next meal. The Congo Puffer fish and the Arrowhead puffer fish are burrowers so they prefer a sandy substrate. This enables them to burrow down in the sand.
Tank Mates for the Lurker Puffer
As the lurker puffers are ambush predators, and will attack anything that gets too close, it can be an expensive proposition to keep other fish in the same tank. Some lurkers may do fine with other fish of the same species, but this is not a guarantee. So for example, you may be able to successfully keep Suvattiis together. You may also have some amount of success in keeping more than one lurker in the same tank, but again, this is not a guarantee of compatibility.
How to Feed the Lurker Puffers
The Lurker puffer will possibly need to be trained to accept and eat dead and or frozen foods because they wait to ambush live prey that swims past their hiding spot. You can accomplish this training by using feeding tongs. Put the food in the tongs, and simulate how the food would act if it were alive. Doing this, the puffer will eventually learn to accept the food even without the big show.
You can feed lurker puffers krill, shell-on shrimp, small crayfish, and ghost shrimp. Ghost shrimp is an excellent choice to feed as you train the fish to eat the frozen foods, because you can dump several live ghost shrimp into the tank and know that there is a food supply available. You can also feed the lurkers snails when the puffer is young. They may not eat the snails though. Because they are inactive, you only need fed them a couple times a week.
Although not very exciting to watch, the lurker puffers can be an interesting fresh water fish to keep. Do your research before setting up a tank for a lurker puffer, and be sure you know how to decorate the tank, what fish you can keep with the fish, and what foods to have on hand to feed the fish.
Learn about other fresh water puffers.
Information provided by Damien Wagaman, December 30, 2008.
Palembang Puffer: from the Lurker Family
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