The Puffer Forum

hi guys, my new nile puffer is being a little picky, she seems to have settled in well, has found a nice little spot under an arch where she has made a puffer shaped groove where she lays and flicks sand onto her head (and looks at you as if to say i'm invisible now)

she has nice colour and when she swims streches her impressive tail really wide, basically she looks nice and healthy.

all water params are spot on,

but.............

she is not eating, if tried with prawns a few times and bloodworm (supposedly her favourite) but she seems very uninterested

shes not thin but im still a little concerned

i'm heading for the fish market later and i'm going to get a little bit of everything to try and tempt her, any suggestions?

i;ve had her over a week now, should i be worried yet?

Try some live food. Have you read the feeding article?

yeah, i've read it and it is a very good article.

i;ve trained fish fron live food before with quite some success, but with this one i know she has already been taking dead food with gusto.

i think it must still be a case of finding her feet(fins), as her new tank is very different from her old one!, much much bigger and more decoration and plants.

still hurts though to see her not eating.

i might try leaving it a couple of days and trying her again

neil

Sounds like the best thing you could do.

Maybe pick up some liquid garlic and put some on the food you're going to feed her. Puffers go nuts for garlic, and it might entice her to try eating something.

Mine went on e 2-week food strike after moving her from a 55g to a nice, big 125g. You'd think he's be dancing with joy but all he did was sulk. after 2 weeks, I finally got him to eat his favorite: nightcrawlers.

fishytyke wrote:she... has found a nice little spot under an arch where she has made a puffer shaped groove where she lays and flicks sand onto her head (and looks at you as if to say i'm invisible now)

Our Fahaka buried himself in sand and stayed there most of the day when we first got him. He also got thin within 24 hours after feeding. After giving him praziquantel he passed 2 large worms and immediately started swimming around a lot more.

A few months later he started burying himself in the sand all day and we also noticed he was gilling more rapidly than normal. Suspecting he had picked up parasites from live food we gave him a 2 hr formalin dip (2 ml standard 37% formalin to 10 US gallons). In our experience when this treatment works the improvement is almost immediate. The next day his gilling had slowed down and he was up and swimming around again.

If you choose to use formalin, be careful. All formalin we found at different fish stores contained toxic paraformalin crystals,which happens when the formalin gets too cold in shipping or storage or sits on the shelf too long. We ended up having to get pharmaceutical-grade formalin from the pharmacy.