Thankfully I have a friend that has trimmed puffer teeth before, and I talked him into coming to help me. So he showed up today, with his little packet of cutting tools ready to do business. I thought I'd have trouble finding the puffers that needed the dental work because he came after feeding time and they all seem to disappear for the night. Honestly you can't see one puffer after they eat, it's like a ghost tank. Hard to believe there's a load of puffers in there. Anyway, I found the male subject and netted him out into a bowl of aquarium water. My friend doesn't like to sedate the puffers, so we decided we'd try it his way first. I was glad we didn't have to sedate because I don't like using chemicals on my puffers if I don't have to. We used part of an old t-shirt to hold the puffer with, and it worked really well, especially once it was wet. It was soft on the puffer but also easy to grip as well. I held my little LED flashlight on the teeth so my friend could see what he was doing. Neither of us could believe the unusual sight in front of us. When most puffers have overgrown teeth, it's usually both of the front teeth that are too long, and sometimes both of the bottoms can be long. But this male we were about to work on had a really odd problem -- one of his front teeth was very long and had grown down, but not the other tooth, it was normal! And on the bottom one of his bottom teeth had grown upwards and actually went behind the overgrown upper tooth. I'm surprised this guy was eating at all!! He didn't look thi, so I can only guess that he was still able to eat. The job of cutting these teeth was not an easy one and I can only be thankful that someone who's got better eyesight and a steadier hand than me was doing this very unusual dental work. The male was really good, he did bite at the cutting tool a few times, but that's understandable. He acted as if he'd like to have bitten my friend, but he never puffed up once. It did take a few minutes to get the job done, and we did dunk him in the water frequently whilst holding him, but all in all it went well and he had a nice little smile in the end!!
The little female was another story entirely. Her teeth weren't quite as strange as the male's had been, but her mouth was much smaller and definitely harder to get to. We didn't sedate her either, but she was not as cooperative as the big male had been. After a couple snips, she decided that she didn't like what was going on and she puffed herself up with air. My friend was very calm and very good. He rubbed her neck and belly and I actually seen her burp. Thing is, she kept doing this all the way through the process of trying to cut her teeth. At one point she had puffed up and the air did not come back out as easily as it previously had ... and that took a little longer to work out. But my friend stayed calm and really did well working on getting this air out of her body. When he placed her in the water, you could actually see the little air bubbles burping out. In the end he didn't get to trim as much as he would have liked to have done, but we felt we'd worked on her enough and didn't want to stress her out. She was much better off than she had been and that was the goal.
It was interesting watching my friend doing this, but to be honest, I don't think it's the sort of thing I would ever get used to doing. For one thing, it's definitely a 2-person job, and in my case, my husband would cause more problems than help and so I think I will always need outside help in doing these things. We were talking about preventative measures in keeping the teeth worn down, my friend made a really great suggestion, and one I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never thought of myself -- crushing the snails in their shells and throwing it all in the tank!! That way the puffers would be able to get to the meat easier, and they would have to bite some shell in order to get some of that meat, as it would all be smashed together. I've had a problem getting some of my puffers to eat snails, but tomorrow I'm going to try this new approach and see if it works. If it does, I will be ever so happy.
For now I'm happy to know that my big male can eat easier and I don't have to worry about him anymore. In fact, as I'm wanting to scale down my puffer numbers, my friend is going to take that irrubesco male so he can keep an eye on him and do more dental work, if it's needed. I still have him for now and I can't wait until feeding time tomorrow because I have a feeling that one big male is going to be a little more enthusiastic about eating than he probably has been. It's a good feeling to know that I've done something to improve the quality of their lives. Really good feeling.
