🐠 Immaculate Pufferfish (Arothron immaculatus)
An Elegant Grey-Tan Puffer With Yellow Accents • Hardy and Personable • Grows to About 30cm
 
📋 The Immaculate Pufferfish, also known as the Yellow-Eyed Puffer or Immaculatus Puffer, has an understated, elegant appearance: a pale grey-to-tan body without the bold spots or stripes typical of many Arothron relatives, offset by bursts of yellow on the lips, iris, and caudal fin. It's native to a wide range across the Indo-West Pacific, from the Red Sea and East Africa to Indonesia and southern Japan, where it inhabits mangrove swamps, sea grass beds, and reef flats.
It's one of the hardier pufferfish available in the trade, disease-resistant and quick to adapt to captive conditions, and it's personable and interactive, learning to recognise its keeper over time. It's a slow, deliberate swimmer, so it shouldn't be housed with aggressive, fin-nipping fish such as groupers, dottybacks, triggerfish, or angelfish. It isn't reef safe: it will consume virtually any invertebrate in the tank, including ornamental shrimp, crabs, snails, sea stars, sponges, and even tridacnid clams, and it may nip the fins of slow tankmates or graze on stony corals.
It reaches up to 30cm, and its powerful jaws can damage tank equipment, so plan for a large, dedicated tank from the outset and think carefully about equipment placement. Like all pufferfish, it carries tetrodotoxin, which makes it toxic if eaten, so never eat a pufferfish, and wash your hands after tank maintenance. Never let it inflate out of water, and use a rigid container and not a net for transfers, since forced inflation can be stressful or even fatal.
 
💡 Highlights
🎨 Elegant Grey-Tan Body With Yellow Accents: An understated, distinctive puffer
😊 Personable: Learns to recognise its keeper over time
💪 Hardy: One of the more disease-resistant, adaptable pufferfish
📏 Grows to About 30cm: Plan the tank size from the start
🌿 Not Reef Safe: Will consume virtually any invertebrate, including tridacnid clams