Concerns regarding irrubesco puffer beaks

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Nubblecakes
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Concerns regarding irrubesco puffer beaks

Post by Nubblecakes »

Hey there guys. I own a female irrubesco (red eye red tail) puffer which I have been keeping for about seven months or so at this point. In that time, I have not been able to get her to eat any shelled foods like snails. As you might guess, this has been a concern of mine for a while now. Currently, I have three pretty small nerite snails in the tank that she completely ignores. Fortunately, none of this has seemed to impede her ability to eat other foods like frozen blood worms and brine shrimp. She gobbles that stuff up with ease even after all this time. It's hard to really tell, but her beak doesn't appear to be overgrown or anything, but due to how small her mouth is and the fact that she's rather shy, I can never really be sure about it.

So my obvious question is: Just how crucial is it for irrubesco puffers to eat hard-shelled foods like snails to avoid starving to death from their beak being overgrown? I ask this because I have seen some conflicting information regarding this particular species. Some sources claim that they are like pea puffers where it's not really a concern, while other sources state that it's crucial for their health. I'm also wondering if they're similar to Amazon puffers which supposedly inevitably need their beaks hand trimmed even with a proper diet of shelled foods.

Any advice on this from people who have kept this specific species and know their stuff would be greatly appreciated. I want to make sure my girl isn't going to run in to problems soon where I need to sedate her and trim her beak myself, because I would feel pretty sketchy trying to do that.
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Pufferpunk
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Re: Concerns regarding irrubesco puffer beaks

Post by Pufferpunk »

So sorry for the late response, I totally missed this one! I don't believe those smaller species have beak issues.
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