Congo Beak Growth

[Hierony]

I've read through the care sheet for the T. suvattii for food etc... for our congo and I had a question form. Is there any concern for overgrowth in Congo's beaks? I've been feeding flash frozen krill, jumbo shrimp (both soaked in vitamins or de-wormer), and guppies so far (quarantined, gut loaded, and de-wormed). Anything I should change or add?

[SammyDee]

feed him snails the size of his eye often. Or try feeding raw clams and cockles slightly open so hes gotta work on getting the meat out. Hard shelled foods wil keep the teeth trim. Not enough and youl be performing dental work on your puffer.

[SammyDee]

Big puffers love live crayfish. And has a hard shell good for beak wearing.Forgot to add that in my last post...

[Troender]

Congos are piscivores (fish eaters), and don't have the same teeth growth as many other puffers. So you don't need to worry about that. Not all piscivores like to eat snails. My suvattii tank ended up being a snail breeding tank, after I tried to feed the suvattii (also a piscivore) snails. He didn't touch the snails, and the snails bred a lot there.

[Hierony]

Congos are piscivores (fish eaters), and don't have the same teeth growth as many other puffers.

Thanks Troender! I was leaning toward that being the case, but I wanted to make sure. From what I could understand of the fish's natural diet, it seemed unlikely I needed to try anything with too hard of a shell. In a different light, I did not want to end up trying to do any manual trimming on our .... less than friendly (I sometimes wonder if I'll bring my hand up bleeding from a sneak attack) T. miurus if she did need something harder.

[Pufferpunk]

Congos won't touch snails. At least mine & other's won't.

[SammyDee]

My bad thx for the correction I thought all puffs had similar diets.

[pufferpuggirl]

My Congo tank has become a better breeding tank for my snails than my "snail tank". I've even seen the snails cruising over Orangetta and she doesn't bat an eye. In fact, I've yet to see any of my piscivore puffers eating any snails.

[Pufferpunk]

I used to keep a giant apple snail with my Congo to clean up after her.

[Hierony]

We had a giant apple in ours, but I really hated the look of it. It came with the tank when we got it used, and it was a yellow one that I just really didn't like. Once we get out to a fish store with some, I want to get some pretty Nerites to put in there for a clean up group. Peaches took one snap out the apple snail, but I don't blame her it was crawling right on top of her mouth. Even with that happening she didn't eat it.

With live foods how big of food should be tried? Right now she is about 3-3.5" long without tail. We have some 1.5" or so prawns in there but they haven't been eating for about a week. Then again they seem to stay pretty high in the fake plants or behind/under rocks.

[Adria]

My Congo is young, very young I believe (he's maybe an inch long) & he prefers the guppies we breed for him but he will eat snails if they're around. I never see him eat them but scrapes of snail shell is all that remains the next day. We don't put snails in very often though.

[pufferpuggirl]

I used to keep a giant apple snail with my Congo to clean up after her.

Funny you should say that, I've got an Apple snail in Orangetta's tank that's almost the size of my fist, as well as loads of baby Apple snails, loads of ramshorn snails and the newest addition is the elephant/rabbit snails (which are very cool).

[Pufferpunk]

Can I see a pic of that last one?

[xrayjeeper83]

I googled it and they look similar to MTS's to me

[pufferpuggirl]

These are very cool .... they don't seem like just a snail to me, seems like something more. I've got about 13 of them and can't wait until they are breeding. Mine are mostly juveniles now. This isn't a photo of mine .... but this is what they look like.

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