Killer Baby Porcupine Puffer??!!

[jabari]

I had a 4inch skinny goby and i recently got a small 4inch puffer. A few days ago i noticed my puffer directly in front of my goby..then all of a sudden the goby lashed out and bit the puffer in its face....it was the funniest and cutest thing i had ever seen in my life..at the time anyway. Then the next day i noticed the goby bit at him three times.
Today i wake up and go over to the tank and find the goby in the middle of the tank on the coral barely alive, and it looked as if he had taken from its under belly or maybe just badly bruised from a bite of some sort.
Then i noticed later this evening he was dead and his body was all the way at the other side exactly where the puffer usually stays...Is this normal behavior for puffers to attack and kill other species of fish, even if it cant fit them in its mouth???
I expected the big 7inch wrasse to do the goby in but he didn't seem to bother the goby at all besides some fights over food...i thought initially maybe the goby had maybe been bit accidently by the wrasse when it was going for food. But when i saw the dead body of the goby near where the baby puffer stays i immediately started putting the crime scene investigation together

 

[boohbahbah]

Apparently porcupine puffers can be evil little things. People on here have warned me, that eventually my porcupine will kill off my dogface puffer and volitan. But, nothing's happened.

I think it depends on luck.

 

[kingsmith]

Your recently added puffer has essentially moved in on the territory of the fish that were already there. Thus depending on the size and set up of your tank and the temperment of the individual fish aggression could be an issue I have had a puffer kill a smaller trigger while in QT

 

[jabari]

wow it killed a trigger??!! How big was the puffer and trigger...and what kind of puffer and trigger were they?

 

[aquaknight]

I have a 5"-6" Southern Puffer that has to be solo. If he gets hungry, he samples tankmates. He was probably 4" at the time, and killed a 3" Humu.
There was a video on youtuve where a Porcupine had nearly finished off a Yellow Tang and was stalking him. While some puffers like Burrfish, Box/Cowfish, and Tobies can be pushovers, some puffers can be extremely aggresive.
Outside of a something like a Green Moray, the most dangerous fish to keep would be a large Mappa or Stellaus puffer...

 

[rcreations]

Large puffers can be pretty destructive. My stars and stripes puffer bit off the whole end of a glass thermometer. And I had to sell a golden puffer because it kept sampling all my fish's tails.