🐠 Blue Spotted Toby (Canthigaster cyanospilota)
Marine Not-Reef-Safe Puffer • Blue & Yellow Body With Black-Outlined Blue Spots • Genuine Coral-Polyp Feeder • Intermediate Marine Fish
 
⚠️ Important Information — Please Read First
We want to be genuinely upfront on this one. Like all pufferfish, this species carries tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin, concentrated in its skin and internal organs as a predator defence. Please handle with care, and use a container rather than a net during transfers, as pufferfish tend to become genuinely alarmed when netted.
 
📋 The Blue Spotted Toby has a genuinely vivid blend of blue and yellow across its body, scattered with black-outlined blue spots that give the species its common name.
Native to the Indian Ocean, including the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, this species is genuinely a benthic dweller, inhabiting sandy and rocky bottoms at depths of roughly 10 to 80 metres.
A genuinely fascinating feeding detail: alongside invertebrates like clams, crustaceans, and shrimp, this species is documented to feed on zooxanthellae — the symbiotic algae living within coral polyps — directly from stony corals. We want to be honest that it's not reef safe, and will disturb and consume invertebrates as well as nip at stony corals. It also has genuinely continuously growing teeth, requiring regular access to hard-shelled foods to wear them down naturally.
 
🔵🟡 Highlights
🎨 Blue & Yellow With Black-Outlined Spots: A genuinely vivid, distinctive puffer
🪸 Genuine Coral-Polyp Feeder: Documented to consume zooxanthellae directly from corals
🦷 Continuously Growing Teeth: Genuinely needs regular hard-shelled foods
⚠️ Not Reef Safe: Will consume invertebrates and nip at stony corals
🧠 Genuinely Hardy: A resilient, undemanding species once settled