🐠 Bennett's Toby (Canthigaster bennetti)
A Cryptic Countershaded Puffer • Olive-Green With Blue-Green Spots • Calm Home, Careful Handling
 
📋 Bennett's Toby, also known as Bennett's Sharpnose Puffer or the Exquisite Toby, has a cryptic appearance: an olive-green upper body countershaded against a paler lower half, both covered in small blue-green spots, with light brown squiggles across the back. This countershading and spotted camouflage helps disguise its outline from predators and prey alike. It's native to a wide range across the Indo-West Pacific, from East Africa to the Tuamotu Islands, north to Taiwan, and south to New South Wales, where it inhabits open sand slopes and rubble zones on reef flats and sheltered lagoons.
It's reef safe only with caution: it will nip at some invertebrates and may damage corals, and it can be nippy toward long-finned fish and other puffers, so careful tankmate selection matters. Its teeth grow continuously, so it needs regular hard-shelled foods to wear them down naturally, and our team can advise on feeding.
Like all pufferfish, it carries tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin concentrated in its skin and organs, so never eat a pufferfish, and wash your hands after tank maintenance. Under severe stress it can release toxin into the water, which can harm tankmates, so keep stress low, and use a rigid container and not a net for transfers, since tobies become alarmed and puff when netted.
 
💡 Highlights
🎨 Cryptic Countershaded Body With Spots: An effective natural camouflage pattern
🧪 A Potent Neurotoxin: Handle with care, and never eat
🦷 Continuously Growing Teeth: Needs regular hard-shelled foods
🌿 Reef Safe With Caution: May nip at some invertebrates and damage corals
🐡 Inflation Defence: Can nearly double in size when threatened