The Puffer Forum

Haven't seen any mention of this as puffer food. My F8 and GSP attack blue crab thawed chunks with great gusto - maybe slightly more than they do chunks of shell-on white or brown shrimp.

The blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, is native to US East Coast and Gulf. Freshly molted crabs are sold as "soft crabs" and the puffers love chunks of them, but, being soft, this does nothing for tooth care. I prefer the "paper" stage of the blue crab - basically 1 to 3 days older than a soft crab, as the shell becomes harder. This is also called a "buckram". At this stage, the shell has the texture of a shell-on shrimp or slightly harder. This stage is not sold - watermen call it a "poor" crab and it is culled and returned to the water. As it has no commercial value, any crabber would probably save you a few for puffer food. Of course, this only helps those of us on the coast or who travel and catch their own crabs (license may be required!). Soft crabs should be available in most places, maybe frozen by special order.

Sorry for the long post. I think this is great food.

I'm jealous of you costal folks. The best native puffer foods we have in the midwest tend to come with large pinchers and a piscivorous attitude (i.e. - crayfish).

Eric

Try using juveniles (after a molt = shoft shell) they will enjoy it. I do it when I can find the right sized crabs.

Tihsho - you must be getting your juvenile soft crabs in the Potomac since there's no size limit there. Maryland has a 3 1/2" minimum size limit for soft crabs.

My "papery" crabs might be in a "grey area" if the natural resources police considered them to be more hard than soft. Hard crabs have to be 5" in early summer and 5 & 1/4" later in the season (except the Potomac which is 5 & 1/2" later, but at different dates). Do you think I could use "my puffers are hungry" as my defense in court?

I hadn't even considered putting a live soft crab in there - my puffs are so spoiled, I clean out the crab gills & hepatopancreas before cutting them up & freezing.