We Spot a Highly Underrated Fish
The Spotted Sharpnose Puffer is a wildly underrated fish for captive aquatics. Primarily because it was branded with the dreaded “not reef safe” moniker, it and the rest of its genus, have been shunned by aquarists all over north America for far too long. In an odd twist, it is reportedly a popular aquarium fish in Asia. It is time to address this for this lack of recognition of its better qualities. While Canthigaster as a genus is full of well documented clean up crew eaters, clam eaters and stony coral nippers, they will nearly all generally ignore soft corals and other sessile invertebrates. This means that those of you that have tanks without stony corals and clams are ignoring an all time great aquarium fish (and believe it or not, this is the vast majority of you).
The Caribbean Sharpnose sounds like name a dragon from a Harry Potter novel. Like one of those dragons, they do have quite the appetite. Luckily, their curious nature leads them to eating many things, so they quickly segue onto prepared foods. They should be fed a mix of meaty thawed marine foods, and some of these foods should have shells to help wear down the puffers teeth and add calcium to their diet. Pretty much all puffers have teeth that will continually grow, and this allows them to eat some pretty interesting and often very hard-shelled foods. While they will greedily take thawed food basics like mysis, squid and small krill, you should not be afraid to feed them things like cockle in shell, which does the teeth filing job nicely and also gives them a challenge to work on. We also like to supplement their diet with a high quality pellet.
Water quality needs are very standard issue, and something you've probably heard / read many times while researching other fish and invertebrates to buy. Keep temps between 78-80 degrees Fahrenheit, keeps your specific gravity stable in the 1.025 range. Do regular water changes and test your water for the usual suspects like nitrate and pH. Nitrates should be under 5ppm and pH should be within a tenth or 2 of 8.2. They do not require a massive aquarium as they aren't the strongest swimmers and only get about 3 inches long.
With limited other stocking, Sharpnoses can live happily in a 55 gallon tank or larger. Stocking should be thought through carefully. Sharpnose puffers are a peaceful fish, that are somewhat plodding swimmers. They should not be housed with overly aggressive or territorial species, but very timid fish are also bad choices. Just stick to the middle of the spectrum and avoid things like the Clown Triggers and Dragonettes on the other end. Sharpnose puffers do very well in dense soft coral aquariums. Soft corals are usually ignored by Canthigaster puffers, but even when a Toby (another name for puffers in this genus) does take an interest in a soft coral or mushroom polyp, the colony will usually recover from this quickly enough so you don't notice. You will have some turnover with your clean up crew, and honestly, this probably isn't bad. Snails and hermit crabs have short lives, and better to have them feeding a cool puffer than dying unnoticed under your rock work and causing a nasty nitrogen spike.
Sharpnose Puffers are easy, hardy, resistant to most major aquarium ailments, stay small, eat well, have easy aquarium requirements to maintain and best of all, have the incredible personality of puffers in general. They quickly learn to expect food from people and thus make very interactive pets. They have a very interesting swimming style using their pelvic fins for locomotion, making them very different to watch. If you are one of the majority of aquarium keepers (like me) who have stayed away from (or strayed away from) SPS corals and clams, a Canthigaster belongs in your tank. Make it a Spotted Sharpnose from Quality Marine!
https://www.fishbase.se/summary/Canthigaster-punctatissima.html
https://biogeodb.stri.si.edu/sftep/en/thefishes/species/2443