Puffer eating whole snail? (plus other food questions)

[irri]

I realise this is a super dumb question, but I gotta ask!
I got some little ramshorn snails and put a couple in my puffers tank - he just crunched them and ate the whole thing. I was under the impression he would spit out the shell - is it dangerous that he ate the whole thing? Did I just give snails that are too small? They were about the size of his eye.

Also how often should I feed him snails and how many? Ive read conflicting things, I was thinking 4 days/week snails, 2 days earthworms (I breed them for my axolotl) and one day a different random crustation, does this sound okay?

My puffer is around 4.5 inches and I got him a few days ago. He was in a LFS for ages in FW (Im in the process of moving him into high brackish and then marine) and they told me to feed him half a cube of frozen bloodworm daily and a snail as a treat once a month - which I already knew wasnt right. Hes in 140l tankwith 1000lph external filter, he will go in my rio 180 when I upgrade my cichlids in October (when I move house).

[Arny]

Yeah that's perfectly normal puffers eating snails shell as well. Yes you can feed the puffer snails every day if you want to as it will help them keep their beaks trimmed. Yes it's best to have a bit of variety in their diet. What you said your feeding sounds good.

[adamsmx34]

It's okay to feed your puffer frozen blood worms many things I've read include that in their diet.

[irri]

It's okay to feed your puffer frozen blood worms many things I've read include that in their diet.

Yeah I know that, I was meaning the 1 snail a month as a treat part, sorry for not explaining well

Thanks a lot Arny!

[Stratters]

Hello fellow English person

There was an axolotl for sake at my LFS a couple of weeks ago, he was awesome

[purplecandle]

Just to be sure...what kind of puffer? We love pics if you got them

When you say 4.5 inches, is that including his tail?

Earth worms and snails are nutritionally better than blood worms, so go right ahead. You would be surprised at the size of things they can poop out!

[bertie 83]

Puffers can't get enough of snails, shells and all.

[adamsmx34]

I just set up a 5 gallon bucket outside for breeding snails.

[purplecandle]

I just set up a 5 gallon bucket outside for breeding snails.

Don't do it! Don't do it!

5 gallons is too small to keep up with the pollution of snails. You'll just end up with dead snails and planaria.

[irri]

Thanks for your replies!

I just set up a 5 gallon bucket outside for breeding snails.

Don't do it! Don't do it!
5 gallons is too small to keep up with the pollution of snails. You'll just end up with dead snails and planaria.

I am thinking of getting a 45l under bed storage box with a slidey lid and wheels and keeping snails in there with a mini heater and sponge. Before I got my pets I was scared of every type of bug, but now I have roaches, worms and soon hopefully an everlasting colony of snails!

Hello fellow English person

There was an axolotl for sake at my LFS a couple of weeks ago, he was awesome

Hello! I love my axolotl, they are amazing pets if you want something different but low maintenance and are so adorable!

Just to be sure...what kind of puffer? We love pics if you got them

When you say 4.5 inches, is that including his tail?

Earth worms and snails are nutritionally better than blood worms, so go right ahead. You would be surprised at the size of things they can poop out!

Pretty sure he is a Ceylon puffer from google images, the place I got him said he's a freshwater topaz puffer. I will try again when my phones a bit more charged and get some pictures of him, everytime I've tried so far he gets scared when I approach the glass and hides at the back and gets black tummy - I even tried crawling to the tank so he couldnt see me coming, but that didnt work out either I just got a tape measure and tried to have a better guess and Id say hes about 5 inches including tail, is is possible to tell how old he is from that? Im slighly worried that because he's been in FW his whole life, he might have a shorter life span. Im not sure if I can undo the damage. He is only in 0.002 at the moment as I am just raising it a little every water change, I hope that is the right thing to be doing?

Edit: I just took a couple of pics, not great because he's all black belly and I dont want to stress him more Will try and get some sly pictures later when hes happy again. Please excuse the watermarks on the outside of the glass, thats the corner of the tank he goes to when scared, so I dont want to wipe it off and make him super scared.







Does it look thin to anyone?

He loves earthworms, goes into hunting mode that is adorable to watch! He woke me up in the middle of the night trying to attack the electric thermometer as I hadnt totally submerged it and it was sitting at the surface of the water, I guess he got confused haha

He always gets a black tummy when I put his lights on and also when I come near him I've been just leaving the lights off, and only putting them on right before I feed him (hoping it will make him associate light with food=good, but don't know if I'm applying dog mentality to a fish) a part of me is thinking that he will get used to it and I should leave the lights on? His stomach goes white after a short while when they are off. He does the same thing if I approach the tank but I'm hoping that will pass soon, Ive not had him a week yet so I am just trying to watch from a distance for now haha

I just wormed him with some of the wormer with the discus pic on, in the gold foil packet (cant remember the name right now) as I think he might have parasites (his stomach looks a little sunken to me but I might be being paranoid) he's eating fine and poops look like they should.

The other thing is the tank decor, I have no idea what to go for..I just have a load of random ornaments and ocean rock in there at the moment that Ive had in my cupboard for ages, I'm keen to change as it looks terrible haha I just thought lots of random stuff for him to "inspect" is much better than nothing and I doubt he realises how aesthetically terrible it looks. All the hidey holes I see in stores I think he will be too big for, I think I might try and make my own with some pebbles and aquasafe silicone. I tried before and it came out horribly, worse than a kid at nursery would have made.. I used way too much glue and so the top looked nice but once turned over it looked like it was a total mess and I didnt want anyone to get impacted - so I threw it out..I know I want some fake tall plants but beyond that I'm not sure. I have a load of bogwood I used to use in the cichlid tank (many moons ago when I first got them) but Id imagine once I have upped the salt (am doing so slowly) it will rot, so not a good idea.

Thanks

[RTR]

Your LFS knows too little about puffers and feeding them. One snail a month is absurd, completely meaningless.

Buffers have incisor plates at the front of their mouths, fused into four plate. Then they have pharyngeal teeth at the back of the mouth to continue grinding the snails. Broken bits of snail crushed apart by the front incisors tend to be flushed out through the gills more than spit out forward from the mouth. some shell chunks from the pharyngeal teeth may also be flushed out via the gills, but smaller bits are just ground finer and swallowed.

If your species of puffer needs snails in the diet, one per month will do nothing effective. The number required varies hugely with the size of the snails and the type of puffer and its size. Some of my FW puffers (such as SAPs) get 95% of their food from snails.

[bertie 83]

That certainly looks like a Ceylon to me. Keep raising the salinity at 0.002 per week until you are at high brackish/ marine conditions. Doesn't look too skinny , could be slightly rounder though. It's impossible to tell the age of a puffer by its size, who knows what conditions he has been kept in. Get your salinity up and the stress should ease off and the tummy will be less black

[irri]

Your LFS knows too little about puffers and feeding them. One snail a month is absurd, completely meaningless.

Buffers have incisor plates at the front of their mouths, fused into four plate. Then they have pharyngeal teeth at the back of the mouth to continue grinding the snails. Broken bits of snail crushed apart by the front incisors tend to be flushed out through the gills more than spit out forward from the mouth. some shell chunks from the pharyngeal teeth may also be flushed out via the gills, but smaller bits are just ground finer and swallowed.

If your species of puffer needs snails in the diet, one per month will do nothing effective. The number required varies hugely with the size of the snails and the type of puffer and its size. Some of my FW puffers (such as SAPs) get 95% of their food from snails.

I had researched before I bought him and knew that he would need snails as a diet staple but hearing about the process of eating them was really interesting and explained well, thank you.

I had seen him in the store for a few weeks before I actually bought him as I needed to research and didn't even have a tank running. I had to buy & cycle one specifically for him, he just looked so miserable in the empty 10g FW tank. I get that the LFS have small tanks because they are temporarily in there etc but I think he was in there a few months.

When I bought him I asked the assistant what the puffer was eating at the moment and he said bloodworm, I asked about snails and he said "once a month as a treat". I told him that Ive read it needs to be much more than that, at least a few times a week and he said "different people do it different ways" or words to that effect. I knew he was wrong, but if people dont want to hear it sometimes there isnt much you can say.

I am pretty friendly with the guy that deals with cichlids there and I emailed him some care sheets on the puffers and he said he will pass the info on, I hope he does as they have a tank of baby ceylons too.

That certainly looks like a Ceylon to me. Keep raising the salinity at 0.002 per week until you are at high brackish/ marine conditions. Doesn't look too skinny , could be slightly rounder though. It's impossible to tell the age of a puffer by its size, who knows what conditions he has been kept in. Get your salinity up and the stress should ease off and the tummy will be less black

Thanks Bertie, thats what I intend on doing! I thought I might get to 0.010 and then stay there for a few weeks and then start increasing again, I just thought maybe if I kept increasing every week to marine without a break it might start to create an issue, or do you think its better to just keep increasing weekly until marine? I'm hoping the salt and just him getting used to things in general will make him a lot happier. I get a bit emotional when I look at him and hes all black bellied.

Does anyone have any advice on the lighting situation? Should I leave them on even though he appears not to like them, or is there another way I should handle this?

Thanks for the help, really appreciate it

[purplecandle]

Wow he's gorgeous! I want him!

The whole black belly thing...doesn't always mean he is stressed. They do it for whatever reason they like, camouflage, excitement, hunger, sleeping....whatever.

Now, if he is super dark, laying in the corner of a tank all balled up...then you've got a problem.

[irri]

Wow he's gorgeous! I want him!

The whole black belly thing...doesn't always mean he is stressed. They do it for whatever reason they like, camouflage, excitement, hunger, sleeping....whatever.

Now, if he is super dark, laying in the corner of a tank all balled up...then you've got a problem.

Thank you! He is so so super gorgeous when he thinks I'm not looking and he/s swimming around all white bellied. I love when I feed him and his face looks so excited to be eating haha I cant wait until he is more settled in so I can get my proper camera out and take some shots of him

Ahhh I had no idea black belly could mean other things, thanks for telling me! I just thought it was a unhappy thing!

No he's pretty much always swimming, I never see him sitting at the bottom, his tail is all fanned out most of the time but when I put my hand in the tank for whatever reason he curls it and goes to the corner If hes in a nervous mood he will just stay up one end of the aquarium..he will swim up and down and then along the front and stop at the halfway point and swim back (I sit to the right of the tank) so he basically just avoids me Other times he is fine and swims right next to me. I see this big blimp in the corner of my eye haha