The Puffer Forum

Hey guys, I was just wondering what type of pellets do you feed your puffer? if any. Iam currently feeding my 2" F8 puffer Hikari Massivore pellets, he seems to enjoy them better than the snails I breed to feed him.

Most of the people here dont feed pellets. But if you do you have to also feed shrimp, snails, claims something hard

xrayjeeper83 wrote:Most of the people here dont feed pellets. But if you do you have to also feed shrimp, snails, claims something hard

Oh yeah, of course. Besides pellets I feed my F8 apple seed snails, fiddler crab limbs, small muscles and shrimp.

Cool, I havent tried pellets with my Abei, but my Fahaka is picky as hell and eats when he is ready lol

No pellets here just frozen or live food for my fish

I've only heard of a few people feeding pellets to SAPs. It's the first time I hear about pellets to F8s. As the others has already said, most people don't. I don't think any of my puffers would accept that kind of food. Hikari is very good quality food (most carnivores love those pellets you are using), but you need to give your puffer a varied diet. And it seems you do.

Puffers and pellets are not a good mix INHO & IME. Pellets are firm to hard, so puffers grind them with their pharyngeal teeth and blow the powder out their gills. Result: Polluted water from wasted food and no nutrition for the puffer. It is also called "shooting yourself in the foot" or doing something without beneficial results and with strong negative results..

RTR wrote:Puffers and pellets are not a good mix INHO & IME. Pellets are firm to hard, so puffers grind them with their pharyngeal teeth and blow the powder out their gills. Result: Polluted water from wasted food and no nutrition for the puffer. It is also called "shooting yourself in the foot" or doing something without beneficial results and with strong negative results..

I can see how this can worry you, but it doesn't really happen that way (from my experience anyways). My Fahaka doesn't blow much out his gills at all. Definately not enough to worry about it polluting his 150 gallon tank. I'm more worried about the giant poops I have to remove after he eats a cray fish or other large meal.

I feed my Fahaka a varied diet that consists of: Dainichi pellets, Marmokrebs, Ramshorns snails, mussels and the occasional night crawler. Not in any specific order. He's fed about 2-3 times a week, depending when his "large feeding" is.

Tanks specs : 150 gallon plywood tank. 30 gallon sump. Large sponge filter. Hydor Koralia 4 and Quiet One 6000 return pump. Lots of flow.

0 Ammonia
0 Nitrite
5-10 Nitrates (before weekly 50% water change)
PH is steady around 8.0

I think that feeding pellets to puffers is a great idea. It gives them some good nutrition. As long as you continue to feed crunchy foods on a regular basis, pellets can be a good part of a puffers diet in my opinion.

Note : My Ceylon Puffer won't touch a pellet for the life of him. He eats frozen mussels on the shell, MTS (he has a crazy strong beak), Ramshorns and night crawlers.

RTR wrote:Puffers and pellets are not a good mix INHO & IME. Pellets are firm to hard, so puffers grind them with their pharyngeal teeth and blow the powder out their gills. Result: Polluted water from wasted food and no nutrition for the puffer. It is also called "shooting yourself in the foot" or doing something without beneficial results and with strong negative results..

I see what you mean, but my F8 just chews pieces of the pellet and swollows them. I havent had any problems so far, but I do think it varies with each puffer. At first my F8 did do as you discribed but after the first day he learned to eat them properly.

Good luck to you, but you may find out differently over time. My experience is that feeding pellets increases water pollution significantly and provides little nutrition in relation to the additional pollution.

The encapsulated poop pellets of the larger puffers are a gift from the gods - they are very easy to siphon out without breaking up in the tank and spreading throughout the tank. It really cuts into the water issues by being able to get that stuff out before it breaks up. that really helps a lot with Fahaka and mbu upkeep by reducing detectable nitrate loads. A few minutes siphoning is better than hours of water changes because it short-circuits the pollution of the water. It made managing the mbu especially possible realistically - not easy but possible.

Surprisingly, even with all his tank mates eating them, Filbert won't touch pellets. I thought the competition for them would help.