The Puffer Forum

do any of u feed pellet on occasion to any of your puffers? Would it do anything in terms of keeping their teeth down?

No. There isn't anything "crunchy" about the pellets and most get pretty mushy when added in water. Kind of like us eating cereal.
Use mussel, clams, crayfish or snails.

I've droppped snails in his tank and he swims away from them, clams he started to chew on but got bored and left it alone. I want to make sure his teeth stay nice and trimmed.

Actually there's a boy here where I live, that has SAPs. He feeds his puffers the kind of pellets you feed catfishes, and he's the only one I've ever heard about that hasn't had to do dentistry on the SAPs. He's had them for 2-3 years now! But I won't say if the food is good enough for the puffers, though. He only feeds them pellets. I don't think I would recommend that kind of food for puffers.

I dont know what else i could try. Any frozen foods that have shell? I gess i mean, enough shell to keep his teeth trimmed

I feed my puffers prawns with the shell on. That helps a little bit. But snails, snails and snails is the solution - if the puffer eats them, that is. Piscivores often don't take snails (mine doesn't). But they don't have that much teeth growth, anyway (believe it or not, snails breed in my suvattii tank!). What puffer are you thinking about feeding?

Mussels are a good choice as well. Just open the shell a tiny bit and let them do the rest.

a dogface puffer, he looks so mean but hes such a wuss!

I feed my saltwater puffers clams and mussles. I buy it at the grocery store in the fresh seafood department.

yunachin wrote:Mussels are a good choice as well. Just open the shell a tiny bit and let them do the rest.

Like yunachin said, open it enough to get their intrest and let them do the rest. My stars and strips will break the shells with his teeth to get to it. My GSP's which are smaller will squeeze in between the open part and scrape the meat off the shell with their teeth. Or they just wait for Elvis to break it open and see if there are any left overs. I have had my GSP's for over a year now and never needed to do any trimming.

I will buy some tomorrow, i will let u guys know how it goes! I hope it works!

I posted here before on my method for wearing down teeth on puffers and I have yet to ever have any problems or ever had to do "manual dentristy" on any...

Yes mussels, clams and the like will do the trick but they are messy and the puffs need to be fed these often to keep the teeth down.

My personal trick is to rub anchovie paste all over a good size rock already in the tank (obviously take the rock out to do this) and the puffs go to town on the rock and in the process as they "chew on the limestone", it works very well to keep their teeth down. This has worked very successfully for my hispidus, stellatus, mappa, all my nigropunctatus and even the porcupines/burrfish.

As I mentioned before, I have posted this option prior and it works for me - give it shot - it can't hurt anything besides maybe foul the water a little but no more than the messy eaters do anyway

I gave him some prawn with the shell on this morning and he ate most of it. I think i will try mussels as well. The anchovie paste sounds like a good idea too.