The Puffer Forum

Does anyone know if these prawns are a little healthier than the ghost shrimp? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farfantepenaeus there also called Brown shrimp! I was thinking about getting a dozen to feed to my puffer ! Anyone ever herd of them as food ? A lot bigger than the ghost shrimp ! Pretty much a live prawn from what Ive read!

I feed my puffers shrimp all the time, market shrimp look just like that so im sure they are very close.

And just about everything is better then ghosts lol

I don't know if they contain any more nutrients..but i'm pretty sure too much of any shrimp is bad, because of thiamanse..which stops the fish from receiving the vitamin thiamine...the experts should chime in and agree with me or correct me..just a heads up

IMHO & IME, live is always better than not live. With live you control the diet and care of your feeders, and you are and your fish are what their prey eats.

The odds are that a diet of crustaceans alone is not a healthy diet for puffers. For one thing, it does not have enough crunch to keep the fused incisors in shape. For another it may have too much thiaminase. We do not have enough data on the thiamine and thiaminase levels of our foods to draw much in the way of valid conclusions on this food versus that one. But if you keep your feeder tanks well (good water quality) and feed then well, you will do the best you can.

HTH

Ghost shrimp, unless gut-loaded, have basically no nutrition at all.

Pufferpunk wrote:Ghost shrimp, unless gut-loaded, have basically no nutrition at all.

Other than being a protein source, on another note I have actually started feeding my Emperor Angel dried seaweed a.k.a Nori and it seems my GuineaFowl Puffer has taken a liking to it too. Which is good news as GuineaFowls have a coral preference diet and are thus harder to take care of hence the seaweed provides some nutrition that they would not otherwise get from other meaty foods. Not only is dried seaweed 35% Protein and 45% Fibre by weight it also contains alot of other essential vitamins / minerals for puffers including Vitamins A,B,C and Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc. So I have now made this superfood and essential part of my puffers diet aswell as all the other meaty foods.

I highly recommend to anyone keeping marine puffers to at least feed them nori once a day as part of a varied diet read here for more information: http://takaokayausa.com/html/noriben.shtml

PP, are you confusing Ghost shrimp with brine shrimp? There is absolutely no valid reason of which I am aware to say that the ghost shrimp are worthless. All live critters for feeding to captives require proper housing and nutrition themselves. With such in-houe preparation I have no qualms about feeding them to most of my captive pets. I would love to see real refs to back that statement up. Shrimp and prawns as a sole or majority diet may result in thiamine deficiency, but that applies to most bivalves as well, along with many to most commercial feeder fish, so is not in any way unique to ghost shrimp.

I thought it was you who said GS have no nutrition, unless gut-loaded?

Nothing fresh from the LFS is likely to be well nourished. Brine shrimp are very rarely fed at all, feeder guppies and goldfish ditto, even blackworms are just refrigerated, Live foods for me are always held and tended before they are used as feedstock. Even my blackworms are held at room temp. for at least a week with fine powder feed sparingly during that time before use (i don't know if they actually eat the food or just the bacteria that do eat it).

Live brine is starved but still have some small food value. Frozen brine is worthless, as they all rupture, so most nutrients are in the water (and thus are pollution only - FW fish do not drink, so don't get much that is dissolved in their water. SW fish do drink constantly, so may get some small nutrients from the water).

The only value to frozen brine that I can see is as appetite stimulants - they are great for co-feeding with new foods that the fish hesitate to try, but nutritionally they are zeros. Shrimp and prawns that are fed and maintained for any length of time should be nutritionally excellent. If you cannot house them for long, at least gut-load them (as with crickets for herps) for hours or over-night before feeding to the fish.

My LFS only rarely feeds the FW/BW shrimp that are not display critters. The Ghosts only get chance feeding, so I treat them as I would feeder fish if I did not keep such full time (guppies and mollies), I kept them 4 weeks with good care to maximize their nutrition for the fish. If you have not the space and time for that, gut-loading at least is highly beneficial, but not as good as well-nourished critters themselves.

FW fish love frozen brine shrimp, but they are more pollution than food. Starved ghosts (or other live shrimp/prawns) are at best a bit nutrious, but gut loaded are much better, and well-nourished ones are excellent feeders. But as with any feeder and a lot of frozen/thawed, you must be at least aware of possible thiamine issues.

HTH, and apologies if I confused you before.

RTR wrote:Even my blackworms are held at room temp. for at least a week with fine powder feed sparingly during that time before use (i don't know if they actually eat the food or just the bacteria that do eat it).

so your blackworms can live at room temperature? I remember accidently leaving mine out over night and they all died(and smelled horrible!)... unless it was because they drowned. is there a way to actually keep and raise(and gutload) blackworms so you dont have to keep buying them?

You have to use much lower population per blue worm box (~10% of the usual refrigerator mass) than you use in the refrigerator, or they cannot get enough oxygen or get rid or enough wastes and the box will go foul and kill them. They also are rinsed daily. I have lots of worm boxes. The room temp boxes live on the floor under the utility sink in the fish room. They run in the low 70sF there. The alternate tank room (not currently used) is cooler, but less convenient - that is where i tried to breed them - not very well, too much work for the output. It runs high to mid-60sF. But it is not as convenient either, and I am lazy...

RTR wrote:You have to use much lower population per blue worm box (~10% of the usual refrigerator mass) than you use in the refrigerator, or they cannot get enough oxygen or get rid or enough wastes and the box will go foul and kill them. They also are rinsed daily. I have lots of worm boxes. The room temp boxes live on the floor under the utility sink in the fish room. They run in the low 70sF there. The alternate tank room (not currently used) is cooler, but less convenient - that is where i tried to breed them - not very well, too much work for the output. It runs high to mid-60sF. But it is not as convenient either, and I am lazy...

oh ok, interesting... so you have to keep them at about 60 or lower for them to live longer? and what do you mean by worm boxes? i just keep them in the bag they come in lol

ok thanks pp, i know ive seen that page before and had forgotten about it.

also, i remember reading somewhere that blackworms can tolerate chlorine and tubifex worms cant so that's how i know i have blackworms from aqualife. it would be so much easier being able to raise your own instead of having to go to aqualife like 3 times a month to buy some. im hoping to get all my fish onto just snails and bloodworms so i dont have to bother with live worms anymore.

I have not yet seen a suitable techique for home rearing them. The paper towel bit sort of worked, but was smelly and too much work for the production. The ten plastic critter keepers w/sand and powder food was easier but eats space like crazy and the tenp has to be area, not just tank controlled. Impractical for me, even with my largely earth-cooled alternate tank room. Buying them locally is too cheap for the work of culturing them.