The Puffer Forum

Are earthworms okay to feed GSP?

I fed them to the Flounders and Gemstone tore a few of the earthworms pieces up. I never seen her belly so huge. She seems more content now.

I had shrimp in the tank but she would not touch it.

I got the worms from our yard where we do not use any kind of chemicals. We reserve this area for feeding our Oscars/JD's/and Jaguars.

My puffers say--YUM!

While I feed it as a rare treat, red wigglers seem to be a nice addition to Penguin's diet from time to time. She mostly get krill, mysis, enriched brine, chopped cocktail shrimp, some nori, and other meaty things though.

Throw in some FW mussels or clams on the half shell once in a while for a real treat. They aren't very expensive and GSPs love 'em! They are a little messy, so I recommend doing this right before the routine water changes.

Correction: The mussles I feed to my puffers Mytillus Edulis and they are SW--not FW as stated above.

I feed my GSP and F8 a small piece of earthworm (nightcrawler) about once/week. I bought a dozen and cut them up into pieces about 3/8 to 1/2" in length (not for the squeamish), then put the pieces on wax paper on a cookie sheet and froze them. I then put them in a ziplock bag - this way, they are not frozen into a big messy lump. When its time to feed, I thaw the meal-size pieces in vitamin.

I now have my own plastic cutting board for such operations.

The most common mussels at the seafood market are the blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) - grown on the northeast coast, commonly $3 to $4 for a 2 to 3 pound bag. They are delicious lightly steamed with garlic butter, though the puffers prefer them uncooked!

I already tried clam and mussel and she will not eat them. I even tried tiny pieces of squid.

She loves worms, shrimp, brine shrimp, and ghost shrimp.

She seems to be quite content.

I have plenty of snails in the tank for her. I got about a dozen the other week and now they seem to be populating.

Check out the list of foods in the 2 articles on GSPs in The Library. You need to get more crunchy foods in the diet. Let your puffer go hungry for a few days, before trying new foods.