The golden pufferfishes – the genus name Auriglobus means roughly “golden globe“ – are pure freshwater pufferfishes. For a long time it was thought that there was only one species, A. modestus, which was placed in the genus Chonerhinos. Then it was discovered that there are actually five species, darn similar to each other.
We have now received from Sumatra, more specifically, from the Indragiri River, a nice shipment of Golden Puffers. In all probability it is A. modestus. This is supported by anatomical characteristics (snout and caudal peduncle shape) and also by the locality, because the last reviser of the genus (Roberts, 1982) identified specimens from the Indragiri as A. modestus.
This golden pufferfish reaches a length of about 10 cm. It is a restless swimmer and, like all pufferfishes, very curious. What is true for almost all puffers also applies to this species: there are peaceful specimens and those that can be classified in their behavior between insolent and pushy. The latter also like to bite off pieces of fin. Under no circumstances should keep gold puffers along with quiet, shy species. Larger barbs, catfish, perch, knifefish, spiny eels and the like, on the other hand, are usually fine. If you are unlucky enough to obtain a downright troublemaker gold puffer, solitary keeping is usually required. What applies to other fish species also applies to conspecifics. Usually gold puffers get along well with each other, but there are also loners that attack each conspecific violently with bites.
Nothing is known about the reproductive behavior of the Golden Puffers. They eat very gladly live food of all kinds and accept also frozen food well. They are by no means food specialists, in nature they eat mainly insects. Vegetable material is ignored.
For our customers: the animals have code 366593 on our stocklist. Please note that we only supply wholesale.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
