The Puffer Forum

Newbie question. But what is the best and easiest to serve food that will keep our puffer's teeth in check?

Also, random question, where do GSPs usually sleep at night?

Thanks,
Chris

snails are great, im sure someone will come along to tell you which specific snails they are as i cant remember the name. I get mine free from a local fish store as they are just pests in their tank.
Fresh mussels in shell are also good. I freeze mine first and then defrost them as i need them.
Prawns in shell may also work

The easiest for me to feed my gsp's to keep their teeth trimmed is mussel in the shell and snow crab from the grocery store. They are frozen defrosted in clean tank water soaked in fish vitamins and garlic. I'm not liking breeding snails to feed. Most don't mind feeding snails but for me it is a pain to get them out of the other tank feed my puffers. I do not enjoy feeding live food. My puffers love them but If I had to do it again I would not breed snails for them as food.

My gsp's sleep together at the bottom of the tank under plants that are in a corner.

Great feeding article & GSP article in our Library.

Well tonight we put two big snails in the tank thinking they would be too big for Daisy - not so, she went right after them, chomping away at the shells, etc. But, I'm ashamed to say, we had never put anything hard in her tank before. her teeth had started to look a bit unkempt and we were starting to worry when all of a sudden we began noticing her teeth looking better. Then we put two and two together. The weird noise we were hearing at night was Daisy chomping away at the hard plastic of the filter, lol. She was grinding her own teeth down instinctually.

We give her frozen cubes - a mix of bloodworms, beef heart, etc plus tap in some dry shrimps. She is well fed and happy.

She sleeps curled up in the corner of her tank on the bottom behind a cup.

No beefheart & be sure to defrost & drain off all the "juice" from frozen foods. Try using a brine shrimp net.

See the feeding article in our Library for more ideas.

Ramshorn snails should do the trick and are very easy to breed. I bought mine on ebay and they arrived alive and kicking in the post (i was quite surprised). They breed very easily too. I started off with them in a small five gallon tank, but this started to leak one night. They've been living in a 5l sainsbury's mounting spring water bottle ever since. They're still breeding so i guess they are happy in there. I just feed them fish flake and empty and refill the bottle every other day.

The only down side is my girlfreind really doesn't like them at all........

I rely about half on snails, and half on shellfish. When I crack open the mussels or oysters or whatever, I get most of the meat out but leave a chunk of the muscle meat attached to some shell, and when I drop it into the tank, not only does he eat the flesh but he also bites on the shell itself. That works for my 3" GSP, but my smaller one is intimidated by the large shell and meat and so for him, we rely on snails once every other day or so.

I got extremely sick of my snails not breeding, so I've been using frozen shrimp (as in human shrimp cocktails). I just hold them by the tail in the tank and as the puffs rip pieces off, I think they're grinding their teeth together, wearing them down. I haven't fed them anything crunchy in probably a year and their teeth look great.

Puffpuff3 wrote:So it is safe for puffers to eat the oyster/mussel meat raw then?

Raw has more nutrients. I use frozen defrosted in clean tank water and fish vitamins. It is recommended to freeze most fresh seafood to kill anything nasty that could be on it.