Puffers' feeding behaviour

[By_a_coo]

Ok... a long time without posting something here... just lurking!

Well, lately my SAP and one of my two F8 started to get lazy. They both stopped to accept crunchy food: they don't bite snails, raw shrimp, mussels...

They expect me to offer smashed snails, bloodworms and the meat inside the mussel.

Their theeth are not overgrown.

They were so active and hunters... I can't figure what discouraged them.

Any ideas???

[JRC3]

If I had to guess I would stop making it easy for them. I would think in a few days they'd start eating what was offered.

Good luck.

[By_a_coo]

I think that could work with the SAP.

Talking about the F8, I have a couple living together since they were babies.
One of them turned into the predominat one, if I offer a mussel the bigger F8 eats almost everything and the lazy one get the leftover.

I fear the laziest F8 ends succumbing.

[Nuclear_Glitter]

Knowing more about your setups would help. Tank size and parameters and such. Other inhabitants.

[RTR]

+1 to both JRC3 and Nuclear_Glitter's comments.

Plus, if one of a puffer pair becomes highly dominant, the solution is to separate them. Mature puffer behavior is quite different from the behavior of immature ones. And it last a lot longer, the rest of their long lives. You must adapt their living conditions to their needs, you cannot change a dominant animal into a permissive one.

HTH

[By_a_coo]

Should I separate them (F8s)?

They both swim, eat, sleep and do anything else together... sometimes I feel that IF I separate them, they could get depressed.

[RTR]

F-8s IME do better in light BW. SAPs are FW fish. Different water conditions are better for those two species.

[By_a_coo]

The F8s couple are in a 53G low end brackish tank and the SAP is in a 30G FW tank.