Shy Dog Face Puffer Help

I have had my dog face puffer for 2 month and he is very shy. Every time someone walks by him he turns brown and hides. Even when I feed him he will hide and once I'm gone he comes out and eats. He always eats fine and swims around the tank all day until someone gets too close.

He is in a 55gal Tank with a Snow Flake Eel, Fuzzy Dwarf Lion, Ocellaris Clown, and Domino Damsel. There are no corals.

Salinity: 1.022
Nitrate: 0
Ammonia: .25 (I know this is slightly high, But this is a predator tank. They get feed a lot of live/fresh food)
Hardness: 12 dkH
Calcium: 360 mg/c
Phosphate: .5

 

Your tank is far too small for the Puffer.Minimum tank size is 100 gallon.I would definitely find it a new home.

 

Yea it is to small IMO.. But o answer the question

Puffers are extremely active fish and require interaction ime. It could be a shy guy or he could be stressed or unhappy. Try feeding him live food or try to entice him to hunt although it may be hard with other carnivores in your tank

 

I did answer his question. If the fish is stressed it will hide.

 

He is NOT full grown yet. he is only 4inches. Im am looking into a 125gal tank this fall. He is already eating live food and he eats fine every time. he just gets scared sometimes.

 

I think something is spooking the dogface in the tank, probably the eel or the lion. They tend to be skittish fish, however 2 months it should have had enough time to acclimate. So that makes me think it is something inside the tank.

Ammonia should be zero regardless of whether or not it is a predator tank. You would expect nitrates to be higher than a reef tank but ammonia should always be zero. The fact that you have ammonia, means that you are in a cycle. Most likely you are feeding wayyy to much. How much live rock do you have? Do you have a skimmer?

I had a predator tank with a large golden puffer (12 inches) a large scorpion fish, a show niger trigger and a large huma huma. I never could get my nitrates down, but never had ammonia.

The ammonia might be the cause of the fish acting funny. I would do a major water change

 

It is a fallacy to think just because a fish is not full grown it is O.K. to put it in a tank that is too small. There is a reason places like Live Aquaria give minimum requirements as far as tank size for certain species of fish and it is not always due to the mature size of said animal. If you look at places who sell fish the tank size requirements DO NOT say minimum tank size 100 gallons but if they are small a smaller tank is fine. And this is from the people who would benefit from saying this as it would give them a greater range of customers.It is always a better idea to upgrade your tank first then the fish.There are plenty of fish appropriate for your aquarium size. Buying an inappropriate fish with the intentions of upgrading the tank at a later time rarely happens and is not good aquarium husbandry IMO.

 

In a smaller tank your puffer does not have areas where he can feel more comfortable away from your more aggressive fish.

Totally agree with schackmel, you should have no detectable ammonia level at any time, unless something is decaying (too much food) and your tanks ability process that ammonia is not sufficient.

If your tanks filtration is not up to par, both biological and mechanical your margin of error is greatly reduced and the tiniest adverse event may crash the entire system quickly.

Good luck