The Puffer Forum

Hello all, just have a quick question for you all. My puffer, Orson Swelles, has been, up until now eating fine. We feed him a couple different type of trapdoor snails that infest the lakes around here, also crayfish.

Up until recently he has been eating fine, crunching up snails and crays both. But for some reason hes not anymore, stuff he used to just demolish now enjoys relative immunity in his tank. He tries, but just cant crack em. Even the big shrimp I feed him I have to de-shell now, and he used to LOVE those. He's still active, begs for food but just seems to be lacking something.

So, is it possible I fed him too much hard stuff and wore down his teeth too far? His bottoms look fine but I rarely see his top teeth, so I cant be sure about them.

Or maybe he pulled a muscle eating and has to recover?

Either way he still loves some shrimp and If I give the snails a few whacks to break em up he can manage them.

If I decide to go with a softer food for a while to let him recover from whatever malady he has, how long can I safely omit crunchy stuff from his diet?

Did I say quick question? heh. Thanks ahead of time for any and all help ya can give me.

oh btw Orson is about 9-10 inches TL, fat and happy in a 125g with a wide open sandy bottom.

I suppose it is a possibility thathe has worn down his top set of teeth or bit something a little too hard and its chipped it. I can see mines top teeth at 4" but he does tend to bare them at me. You could ommit crunchy foods for a while. I wouldnt have though a couple of months will do him any harm at all. Perhaps leave the crunchy tuff out for a few weeks and then try something and see how it goes.

Can't really help, as I know very little about the larger puffers, but just wanted to say - Orson Swelles

Well as a little update he's been eating nothing but shelled big (3") shrimp since my OP, No other signs of anythign wrong with him so far, acting the same as he always has. Probably go a few more days on shrimp and then try a cray/snail again when he's good and hungry

At least he's eating and getting nutrition, so that's a good thing.

sound like a chipped teeth indeed... would be the most logical explination

Been a while since I posted on this, so an update. Orson is doing well now, his teeth are a bit longer now than before and I can see them easily now. When he's chomping a snail they are really wasy to see, maybe just because he is bigger now.

But, since we have been feeding him crayfish on a semi regular basis he really doesn't like his shrimp anymore, most just sits in his tank until I fish it out with the net. He goes crazy for the crayfish we collected and froze up for him, same for the snails we froze for winter use. He loves crunching up the snails but only eats whats inside about 1/2 the time.

He seems very picky to me, even when I think he would be hungry like after not eating much for a couple of days. Theres an Asian market we have been to that had snails and clams and such, anyone tried feeding stuff like that? What do yours really like?

Anyway he's doing fine just a picky eater and I'm not made of crayfish ya know.

Saltwater snails from an asian food market were my primary snail source for about half a year. Freeze, thaw, hammer time - I was careful to rinse off snail "juice" and the bigger pieces of shell, but left any shell that the meat was anchored on to force the puffers chew something.

Wouldn't you think that feeding salty foods to a FW fish wouldn't be healthy for them, long-term?

The way I think of it is that if I already smacked them with a hammer and washed them off, it's just whats in the tissues, very little actual salt. Doesn't seem like it would create a problem to me, or rather, certainly better overall nutritionally than feeding no snails, even if it's inferior to home bred gut loaded SG matched snails.

Wasn't an issue for me because they were for the GSPs.