The Puffer Forum

Hey all,

Ok, I have 5 teeny tiny dwarf puffers in a 20g. How much should I be feeding? Today I dropped in 3 small snails. They aren't interested in thawed bloodworms. I don't want to over feed or under.

Here is the tank then pics of some of the babies.







http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e221/ ... G_0641.jpg

I will have to say that you may need to really think about the layout and design of your tank. Dp's need a lot of cover and points of interest to keep them in good health and stress free. yours may not be eating because they don't feel safe. I suggest getting a layer of gravel about 3 inches deep, remove the plants from the pots and plant them directly in the gravel as they will grow better, apart from the plant floating top left. This is a strain of Java fern called Windelov and this will look great attacthed to one of your rocks with plenty of thread. Once you have the gravel get some tall fast growing plants like vallis or cabomba and create a lovely aquascape for the tiny DP. Hope that helps

Adding a background will help them too

Wow they are super tiny.

Like Manutius said, more cover. Then I would throw in some live brine.

Three small snails for 5 puffers is way under feeding.

IME, they stop when they're full, but you'll have to see if yours are like that or not. Personally, I throw in over 30 snails for my 8 travancoricus, and the same for the 5 irrubescos.

Like Manutius said, I also think that the tank setup might be a problem. Make a better substrate, and buy more plants. And your DPs are REALLY small (Not neccessarily a bad thing).

They are so tiny! I could barely see them in the pics!

I agree with everyone else, more decorations is a must!

It took awhile for my GSP to understand what feeding time was. It took a few tries of me waving bloodworms in his face for him to understand. Once he understood that feeding him snails wasn't and issue I just show him the snail and drop it next to him and he goes for immediately. You might just want to try holding the worms and waving them around and hopefully the little guys will get curious and check it out. Of course since there are a few you might have to hold a few worms so they aren't fighting over the food. (sometimes it would be so much easier if we humans had more than two arms!)

Thanks all.

This tank was very quickly constructed. I was at petsmart when i saw them so bought them and put them up in a empty tank. I didn't have any gravel so just put plants from other tanks in pots so they would have more cover. I kinda liked the pots but will switch over. I have TONS of plants. They grow like crazy for me so i'm usually throwing them away. I just need to get some gravel.

Yes, they are small. They are all under 1/2" but are doing well. I started putting more snails in. I have tons of snails too from growout tanks. I throw them away too, lol.

I will post more pics as they grow. There are 2 that are buddies but the rest have their own places.

My 3 DPs also took a while to understand feeding time. They were as tiny as yours! I had to show them bloodworms for a week before they touched it. Now I'm introducing different foods, but I need to show them many times before they try it! Right now, they all eat snails and bloodworms and one of them eats mussels. I introduced scallop today, they didn't touch it, but showed some interest. I'll be offering it again and I'm pretty sure they'll try it eventualy! They just need training!

Also, just to make sure, your tank being newly set up, did you use a mature filter from another of your tanks to create the biofilter necessary for a cycled aquarium? DPs are very sensitive about amonia, nitrites and nitrates. If your tank wasn't cycled, it might be why they don't eat.

I took a filter from another tank and just put it on this one. That and the plants from the other tanks made it cycle really quickly. I had to do a couple wc's before the water cycled.

Sounds good. So all you need now is to do some training! Also if you dump snails in there the puffers might wait until you're away to go hunting. Let us know how your aquascaping goes!

Be sure to watch out what snails you put in the tank. Certain types can crack the puffers' teeth.