🐠 Honeycomb Toby (Canthigaster janthinoptera)
A Reddish-Brown, White-Spotted Nano Puffer • Slow, Peaceful, and Characterful • Best With Calm, Unhurried Tankmates
 
📋 The Honeycomb Toby, also known as the Spotted Pufferfish, has an attractive reddish-brown body covered in numerous small white spots, creating a honeycomb-like appearance across its skin. It's native to a vast range across the Indo-Pacific, from the east coast of Africa to the Line and Marquesas Islands, and north to Japan, where it inhabits reef environments, often near sponges, at depths of roughly 1 to 30 metres. It's replaced by the closely related Hawaiian Whitespotted Toby in Hawaii.
Like other pufferfish, it lacks pelvic fins and relies on its pectoral fins for movement. It's slow-moving and peaceful, so it does best with calm, similarly unhurried tankmates such as damselfish, and not with aggressive fish like groupers, dottybacks, triggerfish, or angelfish that may harass it. It isn't reef safe: it will nip at stony corals and eat small ornamental shrimp, crabs, snails, and tubeworms. It needs at least three small meals a day.
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. Use a rigid container and not a net for transfers, since tobies become alarmed and puff when netted.
 
💡 Highlights
🎨 Reddish-Brown Body With White Spots: An attractive honeycomb-like pattern
🐢 Slow-Moving and Peaceful: Best paired with calm, unhurried tankmates
🍽️ Frequent Small Meals: At least three a day
🦴 No Pelvic Fins: Relies on its pectoral fins for movement
🌿 Not Reef Safe: Will nip stony corals and eat small ornamental invertebrates