Petting Your Puffer...

I was at my LFS today and there was a man in there talkin fish with the owner..i was just moseying around and i came around the corner and the man had his hand a tank and was scratching a porcupine puffer on the head! i asked what he was doing and he said that puffers actually enjoy it..and the fish clearly was enjoying it..its face looked like a dogs when you find juuust the right spot behind its ears..anyone else heard of this or is this guy nuts? lol

 

hes not nuts - I reckon there are many fish , who display pet type tendencies such as described above


Steve

 

I can't say it; this site is G-rated.

 

Porkie puffers have a ton of personality.

 

I have a large golden puffer and I pet her. You need to be careful how you approach the fish though..their eyes are at the side of their head so you have to show them your hand before petting them....or else they will think it is food and can bite you.

You also dont want to sit and pet him a lot cause it can affect the slime coat...so I add some to the tank after

 

my african chichlid allows me to pet it. It started as hand feeding, but now if I put my hand in the tank it will slide its body across my hands.. kind of neat..

 

There was a dogface puffer at my LFS that the store owner would pet once in awhile while I was at the LFS. I wish my clowns would take that behavior instead of biting all the time.

 

A local reef maintenance guy that I call upon occasionally recently gave his puffer to someone who wanted to buy it for the reason that it was so friendly and would come to the top of the tank, roll on its side to be petted. He loved it!!

 

The porc puffer is my all time most def fave fish

 

Mine did that too, but I would limit it because I didn't want to compromise his slime coat, like mentioned above. Besides that, if they move suddenly, you can get a nasty spining from one of the quills, that hurts. It happened to me once and drew blood.