HELP! Puffers biting holes in plants.

[K2ggers]

As the title stated, my figure 8 pufferfish are biting holes in my java fern. There are no snails in the tank and I haven't fed live foods yet so they certainly aren't biting them by accident. Is there any solution to this issue? Is it perhaps because my plants are already turning brown so they mistake the patches for snails? Because some of the perfectly healthy green leaves also have holes. I really don't know what's going on. When will this stop and are there any solutions?

[Pufferpunk]

Yep, that's what the little guys do in the wild. Searching for snails.

[K2ggers]

Any plants I should avoid or do they do it to all plants. It's killing them and I worry the plants can't recover from the constant damage. If they're so smart, will they learn to stop eventually? Or are my plants screwed.

[Pufferpunk]

You can't stop them--if they want to bite plants, they'll do it.

[Auldfart2010]

My Ceylons did it too. The salinity finally killed off the plants. So I went for plastic plants and the Puffers only bit the green ones. They also bit chunks out of a sponge filter I had in their tank. In fact they try to bit anything to see if it's edible. Oh! and don't use a glass thermometer either.

[Mandalynn87]

Yeah. I have a new F8. And hes in freshwater at the moment. I bought Java ferns, amazon sword ana anabus nana. Even got the snail free out of water in tube's expensive kind. I wanted to put them in and the slowly switch the tabk to brackish. So i chose plants i thought could tolerate it since ill be going on the low end if brackish. 1.003 ( for the plants, but if they die I'll go up to 1.008)
Very next mor ing the big Java ferns looked like swish cheese. Took a second but then he went up to it and took a bite. I bought one smaller ferns and thats the only one he hasn't bit.
Mine a bew, healthy and green as I just put them in. So no brown spots to confuse as snails. I'm hoping he stops. If not I'll go all plastic excep the duckweed and frog bit . Preferably frogbit but its hard to find in my area.
Its been about 6 days since I introduced the plants. All but the small fern has several holes. The anabus has the least. I will saw he seems to have slowed down. He had put like 8 holes in one fern leave over night as well as a few in the anaubs. Then the next day several in the anazon sword. . Looks like he's slowed down but I did notice 2 more holes in the anabus. Crossing my fingers he (or she, idk) realises he isn't getting anything worth wile. Let me know if your stoos. Lol