Valentinni's sharpnose puffer

Saddle - Point Head puffer ( Canthigaster valentini )

The saddle, pointed nose puffer ( Canthigaster valentini ) lives in the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific from the coast of East Africa to South Africa, Japan, Tuamotu and the Lord Howe Island in depths from 1 to 55 meters in coral reefs. Like most species of its genus it remains quite small with a maximum length of 10 centimeters.

It feeds on red and green algae, and small invertebrates such as small echinoderms, polychaetes, molluscs and bryozoans.

Reproduction

Saddle - Point Head puffer fish live in harem associations in which a male controlled a large area with one to seven territorial females. They spawn every day in the morning from another female of the harem. Search for spawning substrate, the females from algae pad. Males that do not have a harem try to penetrate into existing harems to spawn with a female. In a confrontation with the harem owner they imitate a balzendes females to avoid a fight.

Swarms

Every now and again make the fish small flocks of up to 100 animals. These swarms close to individual copies of the Black Saddle Filefish ( Paraluteres Prionurus ). This mimics the body color and body shape, but especially the saddles of the saddle, pointed nose puffer fish after ( mimicry ) which, like all puffer fish has a poisonous skin and organs. The file fish are protected from predators. Never put more than 5% of the swarm.

Hunting and

The saddle, pointed nose puffer fish is suitable as a foster child in the coral reef aquarium. Usually they do not go to corals. The aquarium should be set up with live rock and you have a longer time so that a diverse fauna could spread from invertebrate microorganisms. The puffer fish is constantly be on the lookout for something to eat and find a large part of its food in the aquarium.

The greatest danger in captivity is that not scuff the teeth in a pure feeding larger, lush machendem frozen food enough. This allows them to grow so strong that the animal can no longer eat and eventually starve to death. In order to prevent this you can feed small frozen foods such as cyclops, which is spread in the aquarium and goes down on the stone decoration. The fish learn that they are always found on the stones food and gnaw constantly on the stones, so that the teeth wear out constantly. In a medium sized aquarium you can keep a single animal, in a large one pair.