The Puffer Forum

I have a figure 8 puffer. I also have a tank with round, small snails. I put one in there and the puffer ate all of it right away. How many snails should this type of puffer be given per day?

Snails are very needed by puffers to keep their teeth trim. Easily one of my F8's favorite foods. I feed them snails once a week till their belly is slightly rounded. That all they should be fed at any one meal.

JoseDepacos wrote:Snails are very needed by puffers to keep their teeth trim. Easily one of my F8's favorite foods. I feed them snails once a week till their belly is slightly rounded. That all they should be fed at any one meal.

Those small snails are all I have. I have no other foods, but plenty of snails. Are snails enough or do they need different types of food? If I just feed them snails, how many per day?

For best health their diet should be varied.

library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

Bcummings8521 wrote:For best health their diet should be varied.

library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

+1

Bcummings8521 wrote:For best health their diet should be varied.

library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

First, do I have to give them one of each? I have a 5 gallon freshwater aquarium where I keep the food (snails). What else do I need to put in there to make sure the puffer gets enough variety?

How much does a puffer need to eat per day?

I beleive that many people buy the bags of fresh spinage leaves freeze them and then crumble them up to feed there snails and that gutloads them. You can buy (if you can get them at your LFS) vitamine soaked blood worms, krill, and shrimp from the pet store. I do that so i dont have to do buy vitamines and soak the food in it myself. The brand i buy is Kyorin its a product of China and has chinese writeing on it and all you have to do is alternate them. You can buy frozen seafood from your local grociery store the mixed seafood pacs (its really cheap and last forever.)

I'm moving this to BW puffers:
library/puffers-in-focus/fig8/

Bcummings8521 wrote:I beleive that many people buy the bags of fresh spinage leaves freeze them and then crumble them up to feed there snails and that gutloads them. You can buy (if you can get them at your LFS) vitamine soaked blood worms, krill, and shrimp from the pet store. I do that so i dont have to do buy vitamines and soak the food in it myself. The brand i buy is Kyorin its a product of China and has chinese writeing on it and all you have to do is alternate them. You can buy frozen seafood from your local grociery store the mixed seafood pacs (its really cheap and last forever.)

I prefer live food. What I really need is something (in addition to the snails) that:

1. Can be easily bred in a small freshwater aquarium along with the snails.
2. Will make the diet of the puffer sufficiently diverse.

Oh, and I still need to know how much to feed the puffer per day.

That's going to be difficult. Puffers need a diverse variety of meaty foods in it's diet. It's all good that you want to feed some live foods but you should supplement with easy to purchase dead foods too.

Krill, frozen crabs legs, mussels, bloodworm's, live ghost shrimp( quarantined). Live foods are good,but not essential, and snails/ shelled foods are necessary for tooth maintenance. I'm not certain about fish as i dont believe they are piscivore's. Feed until the belly is slightly rounded. Careful not to overfeed, as puffers have no off switch and will eat themselves to death.

I fed my adult F8s about 2 days on & one off.

Frozen blood worms, shrimp, snails and quarintined ghost shrimp work.

As for live foods i have herd of people getting live bloodworms although i have never come across them so i think ghost shrimp, cherry shrimp, and snails will be the only feesable live foods to breed. You can breed worms aswell. Dont feed fish to a Fig8 its not there natural diet. As for how much like stated in the article just feed enough to give them a rounded belly just to where you start to notice it plumping up a little bit and its good to skip a day of the week aswell maybe makeing that day water change day or something. Once there older you can go to every other day or as PP stated 2 days on and off. Its alot harder it seems to mistakenly starve your puffer then overfeeding them. My GSP is is about the size of an adult Fig8 and i feed him about 4-5 days a week. Trust me its hard not to feed him everyday but its for the best.