The Puffer Forum

I've had my little mutha-fahaka for a few weeks now and I've been feeding him live crayfish. In the beginning I tried to starve him and feed him frozen krill but after 4 days he wasn't having that.
Well today he finally ate two pieces of frozen krill so I can stop spending a $1 a crayfish. I think he just needed to get used to me feeding him and hungry enough (I waited 3 days to try to feed him frozen again).
Just wanted to let any other newbies know that it seems to just take a little while with these guys. I was getting worried cause he was costing me more to feed than my fishes I raise for aquaculture.

i would switch over to market prawns, cockles, scallops n such, i've heard bad things about a mostly krill diet.

The Bruce wrote:i would switch over to market prawns, cockles, scallops n such, i've heard bad things about a mostly krill diet.

That sounds like he'll be eating better then I am. What have you heard about a krill only diet being bad? Krill is good enough for blue whales but not my little fahaka?

You may want to read this. It is happening as we speak to someone and their Porc....viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17002 and here's the full lowdown on krill http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic72164-10-1.aspx

LawOne wrote:

The Bruce wrote:i would switch over to market prawns, cockles, scallops n such, i've heard bad things about a mostly krill diet.

That sounds like he'll be eating better then I am. What have you heard about a krill only diet being bad? Krill is good enough for blue whales but not my little fahaka?

I think it's dried krill you need to watch out for. It can cause lock jaw

As for using other foods it can be quite cheap and it's much better for your puffer to have a varied diet. I give my puffer king prawn, the kind you can defrost and eat yourself. He won't eat a whole one but cut it into about 3 and a half strips and give him one a day so that's only a king prawn for every 3 days, 2 and a half prawns a week isn't expensive. I also give him Cockle meat which comes in frozen packs, he'll eat 2 of them in a sitting. If I'm having fish for dinner I'll cut maybe 2 or 3 1cm thick raw pieces off and he'll have 1 per day.

Imagine how many 1cm slices you'd get from a small salmon fillet

It's really not that expensive when you think about it

By the way my Mbu Naboo is 3.5inches including his tail

i spent 4 dollars yesterday on half a pound of prawns and half a pound of scallops, those little packs of krill at the lfs cost the same and don't last nearly as long, and blue whales are made to eat krill, Mbu's and fahakas eat mollusks in the wild, hence the "blowing on the sand" technique you might have seen your fahaka do

If expense is your biggest problem, you probably shouldn't have gotten a tank to begin with...


But, if you can get a bag of raw, frozen shrimp from the grocery store, they're about $10 a bag, and have at LEAST a month's worth of food in it. Just defrost it in tank water with some vitamins and you'll be fine.


EDIT: An example:
Wheat is great for most people. For most people, wheat is good enough. However, for us crazy genetically-mutated Celiacs, we get very sick when we eat wheat.
That's why it's good for blue whales to eat krill, but your little guy to have to eat other crustaceans. Completely different animals, completely different dietary needs.

[quote="Christemo"]If expense is your biggest problem, you probably shouldn't have gotten a tank to begin with...


I have about 30 tanks so feeding one fish $10 a month is ridiculous when I'm feeding hundreds of fish in outdoor ponds for that price. This puffer is an addition not the extent of my fish keeping experience.

Have you done any research for what kinds of food they eat? If you keep many kinds of fish, then you should know that each one of them has a different diet. Bettas don't eat goldfish food, ciclids don't eat betta food, etc. $10 a month is nothing to feed a fish. I'm currently a college student with 2 F8s under my belt, and can feed them frozen, raw, shell-on shrimp every day. Just because you don't want to spend that money on the fish shouldn't mean that you should make that fish suffer.

Christemo wrote:Have you done any research for what kinds of food they eat? If you keep many kinds of fish, then you should know that each one of them has a different diet. Bettas don't eat goldfish food, ciclids don't eat betta food, etc. $10 a month is nothing to feed a fish. I'm currently a college student with 2 F8s under my belt, and can feed them frozen, raw, shell-on shrimp every day. Just because you don't want to spend that money on the fish shouldn't mean that you should make that fish suffer.

Are you serious?
You feed two fishes $10 a month. I feed over 1000 fish. If I did that I'd spend $5,000 a month on food. One fish would never justify that expense for me. At these prices you guys all must have bred your puffers already. That is the only reason I would ever spend that kind of money for food; trying to bring my breeders into spawning condition. To me paying that much is the equivelant of feeding steak to a dog.

all expenses aside, If you just want to throw flake food into an aquarium then a fahaka is definitely not the fish for you, As stated above different animals have different dietary needs, If i were you i would concentrate on my 29 other tanks and 999 other fish and sell the fahaka to someone who is willing to give it the types of foods it needs to grow and be healthy.

LawOne wrote:

Christemo wrote:Have you done any research for what kinds of food they eat? If you keep many kinds of fish, then you should know that each one of them has a different diet. Bettas don't eat goldfish food, ciclids don't eat betta food, etc. $10 a month is nothing to feed a fish. I'm currently a college student with 2 F8s under my belt, and can feed them frozen, raw, shell-on shrimp every day. Just because you don't want to spend that money on the fish shouldn't mean that you should make that fish suffer.

Are you serious?
You feed two fishes $10 a month. I feed over 1000 fish. If I did that I'd spend $5,000 a month on food. One fish would never justify that expense for me. At these prices you guys all must have bred your puffers already. That is the only reason I would ever spend that kind of money for food; trying to bring my breeders into spawning condition. To me paying that much is the equivelant of feeding steak to a dog.

Then give your puffer up to someone who wants to care for a fish, and not just care about the numbers of fish they have.

The Bruce wrote:all expenses aside, If you just want to throw flake food into an aquarium then a fahaka is definitely not the fish for you, As stated above different animals have different dietary needs, If i were you i would concentrate on my 29 other tanks and 999 other fish and sell the fahaka to someone who is willing to give it the types of foods it needs to grow and be healthy.

I don't know who's talking about feeding flake food. I am feeding frozen krill and all of a sudden everyone here seems to deem themselves dietary nutritionists. I've raised daphnia, scud, ghost shrimp, mysis, rotifiers, plankton, zooplankton, livebearers, and cichlids as live food for my breeders. You guys are talking about unnecessary expenses for a single fish. Adding supplemental vitamins to the krill is more than enough to maintain a fish no one is capable of breeding. So if you guys want to spend ridiculous amounts of money feeding your single fish then so be it. But keep unnecessary practices to yourselves. Don't try to pass it off as definitive advice for other people.
The whole purpose of this thread was to give new guys (to fahakas; like me) some info that persistance can be enough to get them to feed "dead" prey. I've had datnoids, pygmy angelfish, silver arowanas, and even angelfish (wild) that never learned to accept frozen/dead prey. Any animal coming from the wild has the potential to never adapt. So for anybody with years of experience and an interest in knowing how long it took for my apex predator to adapt this info is for you.