Diodon nicthemerus

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Diodon nicthemerus, commonly known as the Slender-spined porcupine fish, is a medium-large porcupinefish. It’s the smallest Diodon and also one of the cutes looking. And with the spines being yellow on the dark areas of the body, it’s also probably the most colourful one. Unfortunately it’s a temperate water species, making it not suitable for the general aquarium.

Porcupinefishes are just like pufferfish very intelligent fish and will quickly learn to recognize you and your behaviour. Their intelligence and behaviour make you soon treat these animals more like a dog than a fish. Combined with the unusual shape, they make up a showpiece in every tank!

This species lives often in small aggregations, but unless a huge (public) aquarium can be provided we would advice not to keep multiple fishes in one tank.

Remember they aren’t reef safe though! They feed on almost anything they can catch, like crab, molluscs, worms, echinoderms, sponges, tunicates, all kinds of algae from coralline to fleshy and corals (mostly at night, but in an aquarium they soon learn to eat during the day). It can be aggressive towards other fish, so make sure you pick the other fishes with care! Because their teeth will grow their entire life, they need to eat hard/shelled food constantly to keep them from growing too large. Be sure to offer foods like crab, whole shrimp and snails on a regular basis.