The Puffer Forum

Anyone have a T.baileyi that will take snails?

I was wondering that about the suvattii too. Maybe all those ambush preds don't bother much w/them.

I'm beginning to get that impression

snails don't seem to be a favorite of my baileyi either. She'll only eat one if it is large, and she seems to want to suck it out of the shell rather than bite into the shell. anything too small, she'll spit out uncrushed.

my baileyi likes squid, shrimp, bloodworms, earthworms, but her favorite by far is krill. I have not tried anything else, although she did eat a tiger loach by mistake (i mean, it was my mistake putting it into the tank to take care of the small snails in the tank... thought it could outswim the puffer but next morning it was RIP)

my suvatti will eventually eat the bigger white snails if they are large enough, but as for the normal pond snails that I always fed my dps and figure 8s he will not touch those as far as I can tell.

I dropped a rather large ramshorn right in front of my suvatti. At first it went over to examine it and then just left it alone. I'm thinking that it's more attracted to sudden, jerky movements. If I drag a silverside along the surface it comes right up and takes it.

so do you think that it's safe to assume that the hairy puffer does not need its teeth trimmed as much as other puffers, since it does not have a predeliction toward eating snails? My puffer, if it eats the snail, won't crack the shell to do it. It just ambushes when the snail's sticking its head out. So outside of snails, I can't think of a way to trim down the teeth. I'm assuming then it doesn't need trimming but anyone out there with more experience?

My friend owns a Baileyi. I remember him saying that upon dropping snails into the tank, his baileyi dives straight for them before the snails even reach the bottom. So yeah, I guess they do eat snails.

The ones I have ever experienced (with customers) would be them feeding live freshwater clams and larger crayfish (try to gutloading high calcium foods so the shell is harder.)

Crayfish seem like they could do some damage themselves.