Do you want a fish with personality, but don’t have the room for a massive Oscar tank? This is the fish for you. The Indian Dwarf Puffer, Pea Puffer, Dwarf Freshwater Puffer, Pygmy Puffer-fish, or Malabar Puffer (Carinotetraodon travancoricus) is one of the few truly freshwater puffer-fish available. Never trust Walmart’s commonly offered ‘freshwater puffers’; these are usually Green Spotted or Figure Eights, which will die slowly in freshwater. The Pea Puffer-fish is also the only regularly available puffer-fish that can live in a tank as small as ten gallons. If the tank is well maintained, you might even be able to keep a single Pea Puffer in a five gallon aquarium. As for personality, these fish are some of the few that observably watch the world outside their tank, and will follow their owners as they move across the tank. They have opposable eyes, like a chameleon’s, and wing-like fins that flutter like a hummingbird’s. They will take food fearlessly from their owner’s fingertips and exhibit curious natures rather than shy personalities.
Feeding
Puffer-fish are strictly carnivores. They especially relish mollusks, such as clams, oysters, shrimp, and snails. In fact, they have a pair of ‘buck-teeth’ which must be constantly ground down on hard shells or they will become overgrown. This means that captive puffers have to be fed mollusks regularly. However, the Pea Puffer does not seem to suffer from this condition, making feeding much easier if you can’t regularly source clams on the half-shell. They can be fed thawed bloodworms or brine shrimp. The easiest, cheapest route for those who have multiple aquariums is to simply allow a snail population to grow in another tank and feed them off regularly to the puffer-fish. Using this method, my puffer-fish tank has cost me nothing but electricity and water since I set it up years ago. Pea puffers should be fed every two or three days and should have a slight potbelly. Feeding these fish is one of the highlights of its keeping. Pea Puffers are relentless and never stop eating. It is not possible to breed snails in the same tank as the puffers, as they will hunt down every snail, even if there are hundreds.
Tank Mates
One drawback (perhaps the only drawback) to Pea Puffers is their temperament. Like other puffer-fish, Pea Puffers are aggressive and territorial. They are also high inquisitive, and spend most of their time investigating every square inch of their tank. This makes it basically impossible for other occupants to avoid harassment. Multiple Pea-puffers can be kept together, but each puffer needs at least five gallons and the aquarium should be heavily planted to provide many hiding spaces and break line-of-sight. With these guys, as with many fish, its “out of sight, out of mind.” The only fish that should be kept with Pea Puffers are the docile (but quick) algae-eating Otocinclus. Some Pea Puffer owners report success keeping shrimp with their fish, but generally any invertebrate (including Mystery Snails many times their size) in the puffer tank is toast. Plants, not being a regular part of the carnivore diet, are safe.
