The Puffer Forum

So I work at a tropical fish store (salt, fresh and reptiles) and I fell in love with a stars and stripes puffer we had in the store for a long while. I could shake the can of food from across the room and he would go nuts, he had true personality. Well, we sold him (it was a sad day) and we got a fish order in the next day which included 5 baby fahakas, and I instantly re-fell in love with one of them and slapped a sold sign on the tank until I got everything together for him at home and let the tank set up. I have been silently stalking this forum ever since the stars and stripes and reading up on everything I can, I also planted the tank, which is new to me. So far so good. Anyway, I have Fahaka (why would he need a name with a cool name like that already?!) in a 29 bio cube. I KNOW I KNOW that is far far too small for even 3 months down the road, I am in the process of setting up a 125 for the long term. Is that big enough ya think? Right now I am feeding him bloodworms and he loves the snails that build up in some tanks at work, I plan on starting a rams horn colony in my backyard however. I have read that some of you go to the supermarket and just buy crab and shrimp so I assume that is safe but what exactly do you get? Just a package of raw, shelled shrimp and toss some in the tank? How does that process work?







These pics are kind of jacked up cause I was messing with the camera settings. It's not really neon green like that ha ha.

Thanks,
Dan

He's so tiny!!!! Cute (for now haha)

LOL, looks a lil green around the gills! Nice start on the tank--he may re-decorate all those plants for ya though. 125g is fine for an adult.

Nice pickup.

Rappstar609 wrote: I have read that some of you go to the supermarket and just buy crab and shrimp so I assume that is safe but what exactly do you get? Just a package of raw, shelled shrimp and toss some in the tank? How does that process work?
Thanks,
Dan

Hi Dan, welcome to the forum. You have a beatuiful puffer. Have you read the feeding article in the library? I always buy crab, shrimp, clams, mussel, squid (one of puffer's won't eat it), octopus (one of my puffers won't eat this either.) I have also done a video on "How to feed crab to your puffer". You can do a search on here to find that video, it's under puffer pix and videos (I think). Being that the puffer is so small you may have to cut the shrimp up into smaller pieces. You can feed a whole mussel, just crack it open and drop it in. This will help to keep it's teeth worn down. The snails will too. I buy all my food from the local grocery store. I always freeze it first then defrost in tank water and add vitamins. I let it soak for at least 30 min. before feeding. You can also search on youtube to see how other's feed their puffer. I found some amazing videos on there.

Thanks for the responses!

Congrats on your adorable fahaka! Do you have any name ideas?

Yeah, his name is Fahaka... Such a cool name they already come with! Fahaka the Fahaka puffer.

All riiight!

Cute! He's almost as tiny as mine when i got him. Altho mine was a bit underfed and had to strengthen. But yours looks nice and healthy!

My Puffer seems to be a little picky with his diet. I offer him a varied diet, have tried crawfish, shrimp, snails, krill and brine but it seems the only thing he really really eats is bloodworms. I mean I guess this is okay as long as he is eating but I would like his diet to be a bit more varied since that seems like the 'in' thing right now. ha ha. By that I mean good for him.

Thanks,

Dan

Is he only eating live worms? Check the feeding article in our Library. Have you treied soaking other foods in garlic?

I've not tried garlic and not live but f/t bloodworms.

Hmmm... well if he's eating dried foods, you'e think he'd eat just about anything.

Yeah. I also think he is too small for the live food, aside of like ghost shrimp and tiny little snails. The crawdad I tried was bigger than he was and the snails were quite large too. He attempted to kill the crawdad then kind of gave up, then i just bashed the crawdad with a hammer and threw in the chunks and he didn't mind that. He didn't go ga ga over it though like he does the bloodworms.