Going to try some snails

[Idontknow]

OK, I've tried ghost shrimp and my GSP, Puffo, loved it. Puffo ate the shrimp up in four bites head to tail. My F8s wouldn't eat the shrimp unless I held onto it.

All my puffers are under an inch. They love blood worms. They completely ignore brine shrimp and their specially formulated granulated puffer food (which I paid $8 for).

I want to try snails, but don't know what to do. Should I crush the snails first or give them as is?

[jeff_purdon]

what i've found works best is feeding them snails that are about the same size as the puffers eyes. just drop a couple in and if they arent interested squish one against the glass and they normall eat the whole thing shell and all and after a couple days of that they should go for a un-crushed snail. give it a try

[kaylor]

All Puffers are different. My Figure 8 is about a year old and eats anything; flakes, frozen brine shrimp, frozen blood worms, live ghost shrimp, store bought shrimp and pond snails.

Snails do seem to be his favorite though. You should feed them snails around every 2-3 weeks. And I agree that the size of the eye is about right...a little bigger and you'll still be fine. I get my pond snails at the local Petsmart and they are more than happy to get rid of them at no cost to me.

I've also ordered some Olive Nerite Snails (brackish snail). As adults they should be too big for the puffers to eat and I hope will clean the algae off my glass. Since these types of snails breed in brackish water I'm hoping the babies become a constant source of puffer food.

Just another idea.

[groszek]

I've also ordered some Olive Nerite Snails (brackish snail). As adults they should be too big for the puffers to eat and I hope will clean the algae off my glass. Since these types of snails breed in brackish water I'm hoping the babies become a constant source of puffer food.

I`m affraid You will just offer Your puffer a biiiiiig meal...

I have succesfully fed my gsp (about 3cm long) with an 5cm Pomacea bridgesi (apple snail) - he just crushed it`s shell bite after bite untill he was able to almost swim into the shell and get the whole snail out...

[kaylor]

For the guy with the GSP you're probably right...they get bigger and have much harder teeth than my Figure 8.

For me I think I'll be fine. I only have Figure 8's and they've have been known to chip teeth on MTS and I don't think they'll be able to get through the larger Nerite snail shells either.

[Idontknow]

Thanks for the advice, everyone! I will give it a try!