The Puffer Forum

First off I have 1 GSP in my 30 gallon tank. I've had him only a week and he's approx. an inch long right now. He is being kept at a low brackish (1.006) Anyway...I went to my LFS to ask for some pest snails. They had some tanks with the trumpet snails and some with the pond snails and he started bagging them up for me and i wasn't paying attention. Well, turns out he gave me all trumpet snails, which I know are too hard for the puffers "teeth". I'm trying to figure out what to do so I'm wondering if I pre crush the shells and then feed them to him will this be okay? I've done this twice so far and he gobbled them down. They're not huge trumpet snails either (yet) they are only the size of his eye or a tiny bit bigger.

Also, one more question. I went to the store to get some shrimp for him. Do I get the uncooked shrimp? With shell and all on? They had the pink shrimp (pre cooked) or the white shrimp which was uncooked. and do I just cut them up into tiny pieces for him? Also, my store had fresh clams in shell...I read about feeding those but how do I do that? they're huge! sorry for all the questions. I've done a ton and ton of research before getting my little guy but I haven't found the exact answer to these questions. Thanks in advance!!

You can crush the snail shells and feed them to your puffers, but I try to stay away from MTSs anyway just because I'm worried about their hard shells causing problems. Maybe consider purchasing a small tank and setting up your own snail breeding tank with pond snails.

Any shellfish or other similar food you buy for your puffer must be raw, uncooked. What I do is buy the shrimp from the fresh seafood counter, and freeze one. When you want to feed some to your puffer, you take it out and slice a portion off the end, let it thaw, and then give it to your fish. Clams and oysters are good for them, too, and for those I get them live, bring them home and smash them open with a hammer, take out the flesh, slice it into portions, place the portions so they're not touching each other in a plastic dish with a cover, and then keep the dish in the freezer. I also leave a little of the flesh on one half of the shell so I can drop it into the tank, because when you do this the puffer will go around biting the shell, which helps keep their teeth worn down.

If they are small and you can crush the MTS with your fingers, it should be okay. You can feed them as is. However, as they grow bigger their shells get extremely hard.