For anyone keeping freshwater puffers, the aim is to offer foods that meet their nutritional needs while allowing them to express the hunting behaviours that define them. Among the wide range of live foods available, few combine these qualities as effectively as the earthworm when used as part of a varied diet. They are lean, easily digested, and instinctively recognised by puffers as prey, making them an invaluable inclusion for both healthy fish and those recovering from tr

In the tea-coloured waters of a West African rainforest, a striped pufferfish glides beneath the roots of ancient trees. To the untrained eye, it looks just like the Nile Puffer that prowls the continent’s floodplains thousands of kilometres away. Yet this quiet fish of the Cross River is something else entirely, a species hidden in plain sight.

Inflation defines the pufferfish family. It is a physiological masterpiece evolved from simple reflexes into a precise survival system, capable of transforming a small, soft-bodied fish into a rigid, unmanageable sphere in seconds. Yet in the aquarium, it carries profound welfare implications that every keeper should understand.