are pea puffers really that messy?

[AquaMike]

I will agree that puffers are sloppy eaters and love to leave a mess. Depending on the food, my two larger ones have a good share of it fly out of their gills. However, I have never seen this happen with my pea puffer, and with some similar food items. They also slurp snails up vs crushing them. I have seen some big poops though. So my question stands, do they really have such a high bioload like other puffers (relative to their sizes)? Or do people just generalize them because they are puffers? Or is it mainly because they can ignore leftover food?

And on a side note, how do you owners of large puffers keep things clean? Any tips? I have a turkey baster and little net that I sometimes sway back and forth to catch things in the water.

[TheStig]

My pea puffers are like two college dudes sharing an apartment, and despite their size, can amass quite the filth within a short time.

My 'muck' bucket is proof when I gravel vac once a week.

This is despite my feeding them 1 bloodworm at a time & siphoning up any discards to reduce waste and pollution. I have acquired immaculate control of my trusty turkey baster. I also remove leftover smashed snails after a couple of hours.

I can see a small cloud of worm guts disperse into the water when they slurp them up. They occasionally spit out the worm carcass after sucking up the good stuff. They tear and rip into crushed snails, and I see bits of snail goo floating away. Yuck. I notice tiny bits of mysis shrimp being scattered while they chomp on them. Then there is the poo, which look like they would be half their body weight. It's quite incredible, really.

But they are so cute, aren't they? Haha!

[Pufftastic]

My DPs consistently have the dirtiest tank in the house (and I keep fancy goldfish!). I love TheStig's description of them as college dudes sharing an apartment. So true! Even my F8s weren't this messy.