Some of the commonly seen puffers might not be as user friendly as their charming faces suggest. Tim Smith looks at small fish with a big care requirement.
EVER-ENDEARING, THE pufferfishes are a common enough sight in both the freshwater and marine worlds. But what about their cousins from the realm that’s found in between? Although often touted as freshwater puffers, the genus Dichotomyctere overall leans a little saltier than this label might initially imply.
Being amongst the most commonly-traded and popular pufferfishes in the hobby, they’re well-studied but frequently misunderstood characters that just need a little extra care to ensure that they thrive in your aquarium.
So, let’s look at how to get the best from them.
Dichotomyctere? I thought they were Tetraodon...
Back in the day, a remarkable chunk of pufferfish diversity was assigned to the genus Tetraodon. However, while that makes things simple to remember, this practice of lumping unrelated animals into a wastebin taxon does nothing to define the real relationships between these species.
The genus Tetraodon was originally used for the African species, Tetraodon lineatus, and as such has been retained for this species and its closest relatives, all in African freshwaters.
With the name Tetraodon no longer applicable to puffers outside of this African group, many Asian puffers—including the now-Dichotomyctere— were moved out and needed new genera of their own.
When ichthyologist Maurice Kottelat reviewed the literature for the oldest genus name applied to this particular Asian group, he came across Dichotomyctere, published way back in 1855, which held seniority and therefore became the applicable name. Not everyone has kept up with the naming revision, though, so it’s possible to find some of these species still on sale as Tetraodon in more than the occasional store.
Who’s who?
The entirety of the Dichotomyctere genus is confined to the Indomalayan and northern Australasian realms, with its members finding themselves in the lower reaches of river systems and, in the case of some species, in other coastal habitats.
The genus is currently made up of six species: D. erythrotaenia, D. fluviatilis, D. kretamensis, D. nigroviridis, D. ocellatus, and D. sabahensis. The group is characterised by the fishes’ rounded bodies—slightly convex above and usually quite convex below—with moderately blunt faces finding their apexes with a ‘four-toothed’ beak.
Thr
