The Puffer Forum

We try our hardest to give boomer a varied diet as we understand this is one of the important things. However, We are starting to struggle a little as he won’t try anything new!

Don't get me wrong he has an appetite and he loves his mussels and his occasional prawn. He tries his hardest to catch the shrimp that are in the tank with him, as long as they don’t swim more than a few cm away. He will chew up the occasional snail if he sees one, but these are tiny ones and are hardly a meal!

He doesn’t like cockle, he couldn’t cope with the shelled freshwater prawn we put in the week....(even after we quartered it and took half the shell off for him!)

Is it because he is so young at the moment? (5inches) I do want to try and introduce more shellfish...but I have a funny feeling if he has to work to get the food he wont bother, bless him….Even fish like fast food I guess.

Anyone recommend anything new I could give to him?

Let him go hungry a couple of times...that'll perk up his motivation.
Pami.

Some friends of mine picked up an 8" Oscar recently, one that had been fed only live food over the years. They have a small and very sensitive child that would be very upset if he were to witness a live feeding, so we tried feeding frozen foods and cichlid pellets to the Oscar. Needless to say, 'Felix' was not very happy about this and refused to eat.

I instructed them to continue offering the dried food (only) and to clean up uneaten food after each attempt, but that they should not worry if he refused to eat for a week or two. It was 9 days before he finally ate and now he will eat just about anything he is fed--alive or otherwise.

Just be patient and keep trying. It may be best to keep offering one type of food until he begins eating it and move on to something else after a few successful feedings.

He's finally unleashed his predatory side

After no teatime mussel, he decided to go on the hunt for shrimp. It was quite funny to watch as he couldnt catch a single one, and ended up with a delightful sand goatee. I have to say its quite a struggle ignoring his feed me dance!

However, as usual i woke to find a cheerful boomer but with a slightly larger belly than normal for the morning....and lying there...in the middle of tank.....a very empty...ramshorn snail shell.....

Boomer has been sharing the tank with Stormin Norman (yes the wife named the snail) for nearly 3 weeks now and obviously last night Stormin but have outstayed his welcome.

He looked very proud of himself. Obviously not so much when he realised he wasnt getting breakfast this morning!