The Puffer Forum

I am looking for suggestions to add a clean up crew with my Dragon Puffer, all that good food going to waste ...

You!

Don't feed as much. You can't put a clean up crew in with a viscous fish.. you must be the clean up crew or don't make a mess in the first place.

Feed smaller pieces instead of one big chunk at a time, that helps.

What do you mean by the food going to waste? Maybe just feed him less and +1 LGP...Darb, you will be the clean up crew lol

If only he would swallow a little more than 75 percent of the food that I put in then I would be happy.

Instead he spits it out a few times, watches it float around and picks away at the odd piece.

I was thinking about risking $3 and putting a large apple snail in to see what happens. Hopefully it is too large to be though of as food.

busybones wrote:What do you mean by the food going to waste? Maybe just feed him less and +1 LGP...Darb, you will be the clean up crew lol

as in him spitting it out and it going to the bottom, then I have to clean it out. he has kept pretty lean, dont think I have seen him with a belly.

what does +1 LGP mean

If it gets picked at and killed, you'll wind up with a giant ammonia spike.

Why not try some tongs for reaching in and grabbing uneaten bits?

+1 means, "I agree with above post".

And "LGP" is me, so "+1 LGP" means "I agree with LGP's post."

darb wrote:as in him spitting it out and it going to the bottom, then I have to clean it out.

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how about a "dip tube" to pick up the leftovers?

As I said, feed smaller pieces. If I give my big girl too much, she does the suck it in, spit it out, suck it in, spit it out thing too, and makes a mess. Smaller pieces she hopefully sucks in, and swallows, or at least doesn't spit/suck repeatedly, making a mess. Bubba is the same, on a smaller scale.. he loses a lot of little "bits" through his gills, but nothing to make a mess, more of a dusting.

I agree with all the advice given, all is good. Impressive, a clean sweep!

But I am a notorious nit-picker... The accepted genus name for this fish is Tetraodon, not Monotretus. and the species name is lower case, palembangensis, even though it includes a person's name (Palembang's puffer). See:

http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/species ... ng=English

HTH

I'm still confused where this "Monotretus" name came from.

these are freshwater puffers?. if so my clean up crew is malawi cichlids, they let notta go to waste.

That puffer species is too aggressive to place with tank mates.