How to never feed a puffer

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pufferkeeper411
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How to never feed a puffer

Post by pufferkeeper411 »

HI guys, I wanted to discuss a topic that I feel hasn't been talked about a whole lot. That is how to never have to feed your fish while your fish thrives. I know, I know, it sounds crazy but it's not. As long as you have a big tank and set it up correctly, then you may never have to feed your puffer. This is because puffers in the wild primarily eat snails and crustaceans. Now in this post I am going to talk about a dwarf puffer, but you could do it with many types. First, you would need a 30-40 gallon tank, but you may be able to do it with a 20 with slightly less success. Then you would want an primarily active substrate like ada aqua soil with small patches of sand. You would also need many plants, primarily fast growers but only if you would be willing to trim and remover bits of them ie: Java moss. This is because fast growers take nitrates from the water faster then slow growers like anubias or java fern. Then you would want a powerful filter with a lot of filter padding. now you want to add MTS (Malaysian Trumpet Snails) because they multiply very quickly and burrow. Now cycle your tank for about 5 months with the MTS in it as well as algae wafers. You should cycle it for 5 months so that beneficial bacteria can grow everywhere and the MTS population establishes itself. You should also see little white specks crawling on the inner glass, these are copepods, something that dwarf puffers like a lot. Now you should be ready to add in the dwarf puffer. If for some reason he/she eats all of the snails in a short period of time, you might want to try aquarium dividers. These dividers should have holes in them that are too big for the puffer but big enough for your new population of MTS. you should feed them with algae wafers for a period of time on their side of the aquarium but eventually that need should go away. Now you want to make sure your puffer has a full belly all of the time and if they don't you can try dropping in an algae wafer on the puffer's side of the aquarium and the MTS should come to it.

Hope this helps!
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Re: How to never feed a puffer

Post by Pufferpunk »

MTS are not recommended to feed to puffers. They have been known to break a puffer's teeth, because their shell is so hard.
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Re: How to never feed a puffer

Post by pufferjw »

Pufferpunk wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 11:17 pm MTS are not recommended to feed to puffers. They have been known to break a puffer's teeth, because their shell is so hard.
I actually feed my puffers MTS and I haven't had a problem once.
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gkai
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Re: How to never feed a puffer

Post by gkai »

It's probably possible to do so, but I feel the fish per gallon ratio should be very small for this to work long term. In my previous tank, after introducing irrubesco, all snails except MTS dissapeared completely, in 2 days. The tanks was not big, but still, I do not feel that with the usual fish density, snails reproduction can be fast enough to provide enough food.
MTS are different, they did not vanish, but became very discrete, only rarely going out of the substrate.
So they should be a long term food source, but more like occasional treats: I doubt puffers can catch enough of them to sustain themselves, else MTS would have vanished too.
In my new tank, I have quite a lot of snails of various types, and will very soon introduce a group of irrubescos. 95 G, 4, 5 or 6 irrubescos. I will report how snails fare, but I guess they will quickly vanish or hide under substrate (MTS). Non-MTS may survive, as I have emergent plants and I seen snails out-of-water very often...so they may have a sort-of-refugium. Nonetheless, I do not expect snails to be a significant food source for more than 2-3 days...
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