The Puffer Forum

Hey guys

Im thinking of collecting crabs from the sea and was wondering whats the most humane way to kill them. Should i just freeze thwm alive or should i cut them in half then freeze them?

Thanks

As for humane, a slow freeze to death sounds less pleasant then a quick stabbing to the brain. I personally would find a way to put them out of their misery before freezing though, IMO.

Most puffers are predators. Predators prey on other live critters. Most puffers can be trained to non-living foods, but not all.

Most humans have mixed diets - both meat and plant foods.

I must be evil. I bag em an freeze em. Fate.

I've always wondered about feeding SW animals to FW puffers. I am concerned about them eating salt-saturated meat. I wonder if RTR could answer this one?

I used to feed mine fiddlers and red claws but one of them became a tankmate for some odd reason.

I never have had any problems feeding SW critters to FW fish. But frozen/thawed SW food items tend to thawed in FW, commonly with or followed by FW soaks with vitamin/garlic/whatever. But also for me. all puffs but DP get non-trivial percentage snails - which are always FW critters. The thaw/pre-soak baths have to leech some salt out and marine fish and inverts do not necessarily have high salt content unless they have been salted prior to freezing. Remember that FW critters are hypertonic to the water around them and SW critters hypotonic to their water. Neither category of fish/inverts necessarily matches its surroundings for salt content.

But there are possible issues with some critters from one condition being used excessively in feeding the other format. Those are not salt-content issues however.

Avoid extreme imbalances for most fish and you should be OK. There are a few puffers who get extreme diets in my care, most especially SAPs (~95% snails) and F-8s (~75-80% snails), but those so not involve extreme differences in water sources between predator and prey.