Petting Your Puffer...

my sailfin tang likes to swim along my hand and rub against it.

 

We have a brackish-turned-reef Green Spotted Puffer, and it allows me to pet it. I used to let it bite my fingertip, as it's small... and then it managed to make it hurt enough for me to decide that it's time to stop.

Something I didn't expect at all happened earlier! I was basting the rocks, and my stupid baster was leaking water out of the bulb. To keep this from happening, I gripped my fingers around the bulb at the cylinder to keep it tight. While the puffer has always left my hand alone unless I point a single finger at him, I had a knuckle just under the surface and didn't realize it. It bit my knuckle, which startled me and I rapidly withdrew my hand from the tank. Now, my first reaction was to check my knuckle for bleeding (none), and my second was to look for the puffer. So I'm browsing the tank as I explain to my wife why I shouted out. Then I say, "Wow... I must have scared him more than he scared me, cause I can't find him anywhere. He's hiding reeeaaal good." Then, in one of those classic "Har har yeah right" moments, I say, "Unless he flew out onto the floor!" and then laughed. But, perhaps because there's always that mustard seed of doubt in our minds, I take an instant to glance at the carpet with plenty of skepticism. I did a double-take, because there he was, sitting perfectly still on the carpet. He's back to his usual environment again, and has a permanent smile on his face... but I like to think that he smiles because he knows that he "got me."

 

haha so he held on while you pulled your hand out?

 

Too funny!!!

At the shop we had a tempermental puffer. He liked to be petted but he would also get mad at me if he thought I was getting to his tank to feed too late. He would spit all over the floor creating a slipping (read: lawsuit) hazard.

 

my cleaner shrimp climbs onto my hand, that's how I originally put it in the take. The other week I had my hand in the tank, had cut myself a few days earlier and it had scabbed, the cleaner shrimp started picking off the dead flesh and eating it. Wierd experience if not cool.

 

yeah i've heard of cleaners doing that..like picking dead skin off around your fingernals

 

My maroon would eat from my hand.. and rub up against me.. RIP flo :-(

 

That is what I think happened -- the other possibility being that it scared him so much that he leaped out. I doubt that he leaped out, but if he came off with my hand then he either gripped too long or my reflexes are wicked fast. Haiah!

 

haha we'll go with the second!