The Puffer Forum

hes 6 months old and 8" Long:


And here is porcupine puffers room mate

When I 1st saw those pics, I thought you had a hermit crab in with your fahaka!

what do you feed your Fahaka? right now I'm feeding mine frozend krills to enchance her color.

Puffers need a varied diet. Krill is like fish crack & is very hard to get them off it but a staple diet of krill can cause lockjaw in some puffer species. Please read the feeding article in our Library.

ktranle wrote:what do you feed your Fahaka? right now I'm feeding mine frozend krills to enchance her color.

PP's right - a varied diet is important. In fact, that'll enhance your fahaka's color way more than just krill would.

Do not feed your Fahaka krill! It wont do fahakas are pigs and like Fleshy Foods and from what I know Krill is found oceans which is saltwater. Fahakas being Freshwater creatures would never eat such things in the Wild, thus the food you feed it should reflect its diet in the wild. Which means lots of Shellfish : Prawns, Ghost shrimp / River Shrimp, Mussels Shell on / off, Cockles Shell on and Earthworms.

Ghost / River Shrimp are good for the Fahaka as a livefood because it will get him moving around your tank hunting them down. But do not over indulge your puffer in live food as they can sometimes carry bugs that you dont want your Puffer getting sick with.
Do not feed your puffer live fish as these are almost certain to carry diseases aswell!
All your shell fish you should buy from your local supermarket as this is the cleanest food your puffer could eat.

My puffer loves Mussels in Shell, Prawns Cray fish and Live Earthworms! He eats upto 2 - 3 mussels a day!

P.S. The foods I and others have stated above are the best foods to enhance your puffers colour, to enhance the immune system dip the food in garlic juice. Try varying his food for e.g. just feeding him kril al the time will mean he eventually eat that and nothing else which is bad news as not only will he be undernourished his teeth will grow longer. Like my fahaka hates cockles but loves mussels as I never gave him Cockles when he was younger so the only way to grind his teeth down now is to give him Mussels in Shell! So remember shelled foods are important for puffer teeth.

I see so many baby fahaks on this forums that have been bought from LFS that have only been fed Krill and look skinny and ill. Which you dont want, Best way to deal with puffer nutrition is to think of your puffer as a BodyBuilder!!! What does he need to build muscle? Noodles = Krill or Steak = Mussels Prawns Earthworms etc?

Prawns, cockles, and some mussels are saltwater, like krill. Your fahaka is not likely to come into contact with earthworms in the wild. However, these are all excellent foods. Just because it's not going to come across it in the wild doesn't mean that it can't be part of a nutritious diet.

Except beefheart.

What about beefheart...?

Doesn't really matter but would a puffer really find beefheart in its natural habitat?...

Exactly! Not too many cows floating by...

Sea Cows (manatees) .

What came before "except beefheart"? :s

Just because it's not going to come across it in the wild doesn't mean that it can't be part of a nutritious diet.

Pufferpunk wrote:Except beefheart.

Oh. Well, yeah, and the same goes for bleach and rat poison. I just meant, don't automatically discount it.