The Puffer Forum

Hi. My Fahaka has recently had a very bad Ich infection and his water has still high salt and temp. I'm used 2 teaspoons per USG and we are finally spot free! He's coped very well with the treatment and is just as cheeky as ever. However, he's suddenly got extremely fussy. He's very hungry and will eat live feeder shrimp. He's both looking for and asking for food but he's refusing his usual frozen (defrosted) mussels and cockles. He goes for them but chews them up and spits them out.

Is this just him trying it on or should I be worried? What do I do to get him eating properly again? His beak looks fine, no different from usual and he's having on problems crunching the cockle shells. I bought new bags of cockles and mussels just in case the freezer was packing up!

Any ideas?

Did you treat for 2 weeks after the last ich spot went away?

I'm currently still treating as saw the last of the spots disappear last week. Sorry, should have made that clear.

Are they the same brand of mussels etc. My fahaka eats only certain brands, try soaking his food in crushed garlic.

Actually, he was having mussels from the supermarket before and is now on some from lfs. The cockles are the same brand as usual but he's always a bit funny with them because they take effort to eat!

Thanks for the garlic tip

Grab the ones from your supermarket and slowly add the Lfs ones garliced up of course lol. He will soon eat them too. Tell us about your feeding schedule and his size. I always feed cockle after a few starve days for the same reason, he will not eat them unless he is real hungry.

My puffer (not a Fahaka, but an F8) is the same way. She loves clams from the grocery store, but won't touch the thawed frozen ones from the LFS. Picky little things!

He's about 7 inches. I feed 1 large or 2 smaller cockles and once he's eaten them I give him 1 large or 2 smaller mussels. Sometimes he refuses the cockles but I can usually wait him out. This way he knows he won't get easy to eat mussels until he's crunched through the cockles. I do this every other day although he asks for food daily. A couple times a month I'll starve him for 3-4 days and then feed live feeder shrimp, to make sure he hunts rather than simply waiting for them to slow to almost death before hoovering them up!

If I feed more than this he won't always eat, or just makes a mess. If I feed less he starts begging the cats to feed him!

Thanks for the garlic tip etc. I'll go to the supermarket in the morning.

Only feed every other day at most, i promise your cats will not give in and feed him

Boosting his immune systems is one of the best ways to keep him healthy. Garlic added to his diets help, as mentioned and some good multi-vitamins added to his food. Its one of the cheapest and easiest ways to help keep the ick away.

Thanks guys. Out of interest, does your Fahaka/Puffer break through the cockle shell itself? I have to make an initial break and then he crunches through the rest. Otherwise the cockle slides out of his mouth.

What would you recommend for giving multi-vitamins?

I use vitazin for vitamin supplementation. I feed out of shell cockle so can't answer that, mine gets his crunch from masses of snails and crab

I'm really struggling to feed snails as just don't seem to be able to rear them very successfully. He gets them when I find them in my other tanks but the Tiger Barbs eat them too and my other tank is full of Corys who leave so little waste there's nothing left for the snails so they do very poorly in there.

Where do you get crabs from Bertie and what size do you feed (for a small Fahaka)? I want to vary his diet more.

At about 7" he could eat fiddler crabs or red claws if you want him to hunt live food, prepare for a fight tho lol. Don't worry your puffer will win. You can buy fresh (raw unseasoned) crab from supermarkets or fishmongers. Or collect your own from rockpools. Remember to quarantine live crabs, freeze any human food crab in mealsize portions to kill any nasties off, thaw and feed. If you can get hold of crayfish, armoured shrimp or blue lobsters he can get crunch from those too, the same rules apply

Hufferpuffer wrote:Thanks guys. Out of interest, does your Fahaka/Puffer break through the cockle shell itself? I have to make an initial break and then he crunches through the rest. Otherwise the cockle slides out of his mouth.

What would you recommend for giving multi-vitamins?

He is still biting the shell to get at the meat, that's good. I soak foods in Vita-chem.