The Puffer Forum

They come on live rock. Puffers love to hunt & munch on them!

Thank you very much this post was super helpful!

Out of curiosity, what does every feed their puffers and how much?

I have a younger porcupine puffer. Maybe only two inches. And I feed him every other day and use frozen shrimp. Very small amounts. One piece of “human” shrimp lasts him for weeks. However, he does still seem to get very lazy after eating. Like when people way too much on thanksgiving. But this is no matter how small or big of a piece I give him?

Feed to a slightly rounded belly.

I have a 15” mappa puffer. He shares the tank with 35 other fish , most are large. I feed him once a day. He is round but not obese.

Am I overfeeding?

That's about 1/2 the estimated size this fish will achieve, so it's still growing. All your fish should have at least 1 fast day/week.

How big is this tank?

What is recommended feeding? I gave my two new little GSP's that came home today a small snail and a couple of small shrimp shavings each. The well fed, sleek one re-homed with me did lose interest after the snail and a bit of shrimp (I'm told he prefers snails to all other food) but I think the skinny one from the LFS would have kept going. I was told they'd refuse food for days after going into the tank but they were biting the rock and I took the hint

Till they have a slightly rounded belly.

Ah cheers, the little one from the LFS had a hollow belly, already a little round. The re-homed one was already quite sleek and takes less food, I suppose as he is ideal weight already and the other came a bit undernourished. Such a difference between them in colour and shape and now only 24 hours later they are much more comparable. I really do hope things keep moving in the right direction. As they're young (1.2" and 1.5") is 2 small meals a day ideal? giving them a mix of snails, blood worms, shrimp and mussel shavings - just what they finish as I don't want to over feed or pollute the tank. So far a small snail and a very small pinch of worms or seafood shavings each twice a day.

That should work until the fish has bulked up & then skip 1x/week.

Thank you, the one re-homed with me is larger and sleeker and already on a schedule of one fast day a month. The one that came from the LFS is a little smaller in length and was very thin but in 4 days is looking much more well fed. Maybe I'll add a fast day next week as he's already filling out so well? I want to ensure that I never need to put these guys through beak trimming, Are snails of appropriate size for one of their meals daily needed to maintain beaks or is every other or couple of days ideal? At the moment I'm going around all the LFS in driving distance to collect pest snails from them to keep these guys fed properly but I have a snail breeding tank up and running that will keep them provided for going forward. Annoyingly the snails in my freshwater tank are trumpets so way too hard for them, that would have been handy. I keep them in there as the loaches like to twizzle them out of their shells to eat but puffers don't have that feeding method of course. I'm just glad I have friends at the LFS that are happy to pick snails for me until the stock I have are producing sustainable food - at the moment I have some larger ramshorns breeding and some bladder snails that are too small to feed but growing and hopefully eventually breeding.

Snails are fine but IMO not really necessary. Plenty of crunchy eats in the produce section of most grocery stores.

What else is good for keeping the beaks down? they're only little guys right now, 1.5" so a lot of shellfish are too big at the moment and I'm not sure what they can crunch through when they're bigger. Thank you!

Crack open a mussel & offer it on the half-shell. Its beak will grind down as it's getting at the meat.

My dwarf puffer eats a few frozen bloodworms (like seriously just 2 or 3) and its stomach bloats up like it is pregnant lol. I do feed it every day despite online articles saying only to feed it once every few days though just because it started out always fat and eating snails in my tank then about 2 weeks later it ran out of snails and always swims up to the glass when I come home from work expecting food.