The Puffer Forum

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You may have to go head and do a teeth trimming, for his sake I would just do it so that I could get rid of that gap. You are going to stress him more by catching him every time he has something stuck in his teeth. Then you can feed him mussel, clams and crabs. With the mussel and clams I would remove most of the meat and let him scrape his teeth to get the last bits left on it. After he's done that then I would feed him pieces of the meat I removed.

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mike_freegan wrote:I guess I'll go pick up some clove oil then. He is going to hate me forever He sulks enough when I clean his tank!

If anyone else has any advice on what is THE BEST food to wear down teeth, I'd appreciate it. I do not want to have to do this again.

If you can get FinQuil, please use that. Clove oil causes irreversible brain damage.
Also, anything that they can scrape their teeth on works fine for trimming down the teeth.

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Clove oil seems to be relatively safe for one treatment, its when you use it repetitively that people are having problems. I would not hesitate to use it if you didn't have time to wait for a shipment of Finquil, but I'd prefer to see anyone use MS-222 (finquil) if they had time to plan for it.

I would also recommend doing the trimming.. I always knew my SAP's needed a trim when food started to get caught in their teeth (causing them to panic and stress out). If you cut them down nice and short, they'll be able to grow in straight, they're probably crooked because he broke one off at some point and they just didn't grow back right.

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Christemo wrote:

mike_freegan wrote:I guess I'll go pick up some clove oil then. He is going to hate me forever He sulks enough when I clean his tank!

If anyone else has any advice on what is THE BEST food to wear down teeth, I'd appreciate it. I do not want to have to do this again.

If you can get FinQuil, please use that. Clove oil causes irreversible brain damage.
Also, anything that they can scrape their teeth on works fine for trimming down the teeth.

It's actually spelled "Finquel."

Yes, it is spelled Finquel, which is one of the reasons a lot of people can never find it when they search for it *sigh* hehe

Look in this thread for suppliers:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15083

And remember, Finquel is just a brand name, the actual chemical name is MS-222 and you might have to find it under another brand or manufacturer...

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hi mike, this was the only place on the internet that I could find Finquel in the Uk:

http://www.pharmaq.co.uk/shop/erol.html#483X0

it is pricey but from reading what could happen with clove oil you may not want to risk it. hope that helps

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I use frozen clams on the half shell and I first thaw them in a little tank water with a splash of vitamins. I'll then trim away most of the meat with scissors, I've tried pulling the meat out by hand but I'd always end up taking it all out. I usually leave just a little meat stuck to the shell that they have to scrape at with their teeth. I don't give them clams that often. They are not wild about them, but then again my F8s like to eat snails.

Have you tried not feeding Archie for a couple days and then offering him snails? What kind and size snails do you use? Is it the Zebra/Spotted Nerite Snails from your tank?

Do you know anyone who has experience trimming puffer teeth that you lend you a hand?

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Have you tried crushing the ramshorn/pond snails so he can get a taste without having to break the shell himself?

Sometimes that's all it takes and then he'll learn to work for it. Zebra snails and MTS usually have too hard of shells for puffers to crack and break, the smaller puffers at least, so that's no surprise he wasn't interested. That may be how his teeth got screwing in the first place, trying to crack a shell that was too hard.

Snails are technically always the best when it comes to wearing down those teeth, but some tricks people do are smoosh the food into pieces of rough rock (like live rock, but the dead, base stuff, texax holey rock, lace rock, etc) so the puffer has to scrape its teeth on the rock to get the food. Same deal with clams, leave the meat on the shell so he has to scrape it out. You can try crickets and grasshoppers too, and shrimp like ghost shrimp, red cherries, etc.. None of that is really as hard as a snail, but they all help.

What went wrong with the trimming? Its kind of traumatic (for you) the first time, but if you follow the instructions in the library, it should go pretty well. It helps if you have small fingers though.. dang little mouths and lips... Most of the time the puffers wake up and don't even bother pouting afterwords, so I can't believe they remember much of the experience.