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Fahaka PufferGlobe Fish ~ Striped Puffer ~ Nile Puffer ~ Band Puffer Family: Tetraodontidae
With its yellow stripes and bright red/orange eye, the Fahaka Puffer can be a beautiful pet fish!The Fahaka Puffer is also known by quite a few other common names, including Globe Fish, Striped Puffer, Nile Puffer, and Band Puffer. It is a large freshwater puffer that can become a very beautiful and friendly pet. It has a robust comical appearance, an intelligent and curious nature, and a very hearty appetite. Though they are quite striking in appearance, the Fahaka Puffer or Globe Fish can be incredibly aggressive. They will most likely damage or kill any other fish that is kept with them. All puffers have a sharp beak in their mouths and the Fahaka Puffer will use it to remove pieces from just about any living thing that is in the tank with them. If you want a wonderful single specimen aquarium, don’t let the aggressive nature of the Fahaka Puffer dissuade you from keeping one. If kept by themselves, they really can be a wonderful pet and can be easily trained to take food from your hand. For more Information on keeping this fish see:
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| Geographic Distribution Tetraodon lineatus |
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| Point data provided by FishBase.org |
Distribution:
The Fahaka Puffers or Globe Fish are found in the Nile, Chad basin, Niger, Volta, Gambia, Geba and Senegal Rivers in Africa. They inhabit large rivers and open water, as well as weed beds and vegetated areas.
Status:
These fish are not endangered.
Description:
The Fahaka Puffer or Globe Fish is a stocky elongated fish covered with short prickles and has bright orange/red eyes. It's body is brownish-gray on the back, gradually becoming lighter towards the under parts, ending with a whitish belly. There are a series of light, often golden colored, horizontal stripes running from the pectoral fins back across the tail. Like many of the pufferfish, the coloring of the Fahaka Puffer or Globe Fish can vary with age, disposition, and environment. While a juvenile may have a more mottled appearance, the adult will become more intensified, with the dark areas taking on a deep red coloring.
Pufferfish have
the ability to 'puff' themselves up with water or air if threatened. When they inflate, their spines protrude outward and this
apparently helps keep them from being eaten. Another defense of many puffer species, including this one, is to produce toxic substances in their flesh that is poisonous
if eaten. The Pufferfish can be quite long lived in the aquarium, many living for 10 or more years.
Size - Weight:
These fish can grow to a maximum size of about 17 inches (43 cm).
Care and feeding:
The Fahaka Puffer or Globe Fish are carnivores. Their natural diet consists of insects, mollusks, and crustaceans; so snails, crabs, crayfish and shrimp would be good choices as food. In an aquarium they will also eat small fish and can sometimes be trained to eat freeze dried krill. This puffer should be fed every other day while small, decreasing this to just two or three times per week as an adult.
Puffers have strong teeth that grow throughout their
lives. They need to be offered hard shelled live food often
to keep their teeth worn down. Acceptable foods include shellfish, crustaceans and hard shelled foods such as snails will help wear down the teeth. If the teeth get too long, they will be unable to eat, requiring the owner to clip the teeth.
Since puffers do not have gill covers or scales, they are thought to be more susceptible to diseases, nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels. Consequently they are not a good fish to cycle an aquarium with. Also because they usually don't eat all of their food (messy eaters!), these fish will usually put more load on the aquarium filtration requiring more frequent water changes and better maintenance in general. A generous weekly water change of 30% to 50% is the standard recommendation for a puffer aquarium.
They are not particularly fast growing so smaller specimens can be kept for some time in a relatively small tank. Eventually you’ll need a minimum of a 30 to 40 gallon tank to house an adult, but preferably a 100+ gallon to give your pet the best. This pufferfish is predominantly a freshwater species, though it can be kept in lightly brackish conditions.
Water Region: Top, Middle, Bottom:
The Fahaka Puffer or Globe Fish will swim in most parts of the tank.
Acceptable Water Conditions:
Temp: 75° - 82° F (24 - 29°C)
pH: of around 7.0
Hardness: 10 -12 dH
Social Behaviors:
This pufferfish can be very aggressive towards all fish including other Fahaka Puffers.
Sexual Differences:
Sexual differences are unknown though females may be distinguished when spawning as their bellies get rounder while males will remain more slender.
Breeding/Reproduction:
Has not been bred commercially in captivity, but there are reports of successful breeding by hobbyists.
Availability:
The Fahaka Puffer or Globe Fish are commonly available, but due to their aggressive nature you may have a hard time finding them in most retail stores.
Comments from people who have kept this fish:
Fahakas are one fish that 99% of the bunch are extremely aggressive. Occasionally there's the one that will stay unaggressive. Now, I do not want to disuade anyone from getting one of these if they truely want one, but do NOT expect that if you have a fahaka in a community tank now, that it will stay with that temperment. Fahakas get more aggressive as they get older. Also, Fahakas cannot be housed in a 30-40 gallon tank. Way ungodly too small. They get a foot long for pete's sake! They would barely be able to even turn around in a tank that size. Absolute minimum for Fahakas are 120 gallons.
Hi i just wanted to say, everyone thought i was crazy. I have 2 marine tanks. One has 3 puffers, a dog face, a porcupine puffer, and a spiny box; and a volitan lion, a damsel, a snow flake eel, lots of live rock and lots of live sand, snails, and crabs. All get along great. The second one has ocean rider seahorses, a yellow tang, a clown fish, a molly, a coral banded shrimp, and 2 pepermint shrimp; also scarlet crabs, more live rock and sand. It's a 50 gallon hexagon. Anyways they all get along, so i believe it's the peronality of the fish you get. I feed mine twice a day, except the seahorses diet on sundays. All mine have great personalities and have been living together almost 2yrs. All eat frozn foods and are hand fed. So if you want something research it first, then go for it. www.wetwebmedia.com is great to learn from, and take your time and be patient, it's worth it.
My Nile Puffer is about 6 or 7 years old now. He has always been kept in an 80 gal community tank. He lives with cats, bristle nose plec, skirted tetras, giant zebra danos, an Avacado Puffer and a very smart crayfish. He is great, very smart, and more additude than Opra! He is now about 10 inches long. One thing to keep in mind when keeping these fish in a community tank is they are a little lazy and will not go out of their way to chase other fish, so any fast moving fish is pretty safe. Ours also likes to bury himself in the sand and wait for lunch to arrive!
I have a 55 Gallon tank with a varity of fish 4 spotted puffers, 1 black african knife, 1 avocato puffer, 1 target puffer, 1 12" pico, and 1 fahaka puffer. I also have a red ear slider. Fish stores told me that i was crazy, but i've had my tank for 1 year and everybody gets along just fine. I had problems of fin nipping at first. So I started feeding 3 times a day and slowly droped to 1 a Day. They all know how I am and come running when I open the lid. The turtle will eat out of my hands and loves frozen minnows. So if your going to start an exotic fresh water tank. Provide lots of plants, feed well, and never add new fish. Thanks, Jeremy Cook
Some of the coolest comments:
I've had my fahaka puffer for about 9 months. Currently he is approximatly 3" and for the time being he is being kept in a 10 gallon. I knew these guys were VERY agressive when I bought him, but since I got him I've had to either hold his food for him or "knock" them unconcious for him to eat anything besides snails or crayfish. I actually had a feeder in the tank with him for more than 6 weeks, without so much as a lunge toward it. So I decided a couple days ago to introduce him to my 90 gallon. I have several fish in there mostly 3" or less, consisting of cichlids, spotted puffers, and angel fish, along with a 20" pleco. Everything went well with him the first 2 days. He only attempted to eat the pleco, which he basically bit his tail, which did no damage, so I wasn't worried. I decided to get a new little silver shark catfish, and when added to the tank he went right to the fahaka. To my surprise, the fahaka moved out of the way and let him go by without so much as a second look. I thought "this is awesome, I'm going to be the first that I know of with a fahaka in a comunity tank!". I was very wrong. No more than 30 seconds later he bit the 3.5" silver in half, with no warning at all. That was the end of his stay in a community tank. He is one of the most beautiful fish I own, but do yourself a favor if you get one, don't attempt community adaptation, unless you don't mind losing some of, if not all of your other fish.
Author: Ken Childs
Additional Information: Clarice Brough CFFS
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