The Puffer Forum

Hi. after feeding my puffers my tank left alot of empty shells. Is there any way u guys hav a gd way to clean those shells or can i just bury them into the sand? hahaha.

Anyway I know that GSP are puffers with personality. But my puffers normally ignored me until i try to feed them food. damn depressed man. Is there any way to train them?

I just vacuum them up with the siphon during water changes.

Take out the snail shell after every meal. Take out any easily visible leftover food as well. You will maintain higher water quality this way.

Keep feeding your puff. They will soon recognize you as the food person lol

Terrance wrote:Take out the snail shell after every meal. Take out any easily leftover food as well. You will maintain higher water quality this way.

Keep feeding your puff. They will soon recognize you as the food person lol

hahaha. Im feeding them 1cube of frozen bloodworm twice a day. in the morning and in the evening.. not sure if im overfeeding them.?

Empty crushed shells are fine in the substrate or cleaned up.

Pufferpunk wrote:Empty crushed shells are fine in the substrate or cleaned up.

Good, because my Python just plain can't get enough suction to vacuum up most of the snail shell bits in my F8 tank. Puffer poop and assorted debris gets sucked up easily, but some of those snail shell bits are stubborn!

Use a small net to scoop out the snail shells if needed. I remember my DP only eating part of the snail and left the remaining to rot in the shell.

My puffer tanks had a non-trivial percentage of crushed snail shell in the substrate. I routinely removed any chunks of snail shells, but over decades when vacuuming the substrate there would be an easily seen layer of small shell fragments at the top of the vacuum tube of the Python. If they do dissolve a bit, that would just help support the KH of the water, so it would to my thinking be a positive impact if any.

FWIW