Guineafowl puffer

Arothron meleagris

Also known as Golden puffer, Spotted puffer, Guinea fowl puffer, Guineafowl toadfish

SaltwaterFish

Guineafowl puffer (Arothron meleagris) — Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

Care at a glance

Temperature: 75–81°F (24–27°C)
pH: 8.0–8.4
Adult size: 19.7 in (50 cm)
Minimum tank: 180 gal (680 L)
Temperament: Mostly peaceful
Social behavior: Solitary
Swim level: Middle
Difficulty: Difficult
Breeding: No record
Rarity: Common
Reef safe: Not reef safe
Origin: Native to the Indo-Pacific and eastern Pacific, living on coral reefs where it browses on coral tips and invertebrates.
Family: Tetraodontidae

Overview

This is a large, messy fish that needs a fish-only tank of at least 680 litres with strong filtration and a protein skimmer, kept at 24 to 27 C and pH 8.0 to 8.4. It is not reef safe: it nips corals, clams and anemones and eats shrimp, snails and crabs. Feed hard-shelled foods like clams, mussels, crab and shrimp in the shell to keep the beak worn down. It is generally calm toward similar-sized fish but should never share a tank with prey-sized inverts.

In the wild

The guineafowl puffer comes in a black form covered in tiny white dots and a bright solid gold form, both sold under different names though they are the same species. It is a chunky, slow-swimming puffer with a beak of fused teeth strong enough to crush coral and shellfish. It has big eyes and an inquisitive, almost dog-like personality.

Good to know

Arothron meleagris reaches around 50 cm and, like all puffers, can inflate with water to deter predators and carries tetrodotoxin in its organs. Its four fused teeth keep growing and are worn down by crunching hard-shelled prey. The black-spotted and golden colour phases occur naturally in the same populations.

Did you know

The golden and the black-spotted guineafowl puffers look so different that they were long sold as separate fish, but they are simply two colour morphs of the very same species.