People's real world experience with Large puffer in a reef

[Boehmtown]

Looking for some real world experience or advice about keeping a large puffer in a reef. Is there any success with any of the large puffers in an SPS tank. I'm going to do a puffer tank, and use the sump to grow sps. Obviously if I can combine the two that'd be awesome. So I'm looking for any advice you can give. Like have the corals in first, it train him to eat first. Etc etc anything really

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Bumping your post!

 

[Boehmtown]

Bumping your post!

Thank you

 

[Gill the 3rd]

This is hard to answer because it really depends on the personality of the puffer. So I had a porcupine, dogface and blue spotted puffer in a reef tank consisting mainly of softies and some montis. Everyone got along just fine, no aggression at all. When I added some lps and birdsnest, my dogface puffer went to town on them, I ended up rehoming him. My blue spot occasionally nips at the montis, but nothing serious.

My porcupine is fine with corals and doesn't bother other fish. I have had porcupine puffers before that will try to murder everything in the tank and others that could care less about other fish and corals.

 

[Gill the 3rd]

I guess I should have asked this first lol - what kind of puffers are you looking to keep and how big is your tank?

Another issue I forgot to mention is high nutrients in the tank. My porcupine is a pig when it comes to eating and my tank runs high in nutrients. My sps doesn't really seem to care though.

 

[Boehmtown]

I guess I should have asked this first lol - what kind of puffers are you looking to keep and how big is your tank?

Another issue I forgot to mention is high nutrients in the tank. My porcupine is a pig when it comes to eating and my tank runs high in nutrients. My sps doesn't really seem to care though.

I've had puffers before , just not in a reef, dog faces are my favorite, but a close second is a porcupine , so I have intentions on an SPS tank with a porcupine. But if I fall in love with one, I'm willing to do sump SPS.

 

[Gill the 3rd]

An SPS tank with a porcupine sounds awesome, provided its a big enough tank. I've had 4 porcupine puffers in reef tanks (not at the same time) and I've never had issues with any them touching any type of corals. The only issues I've had is they may be aggressive towards other fish as I mentioned above. 2 of them didn't care about other fish, the other 2 tried to kill everything immediately.

I've had 2 dogface puffers in reef tanks with SPS and both went after corals. Neither had any aggression towards other fish.

I say go for it if the tank is big enough, but be ready to rehome if necessary.