The Puffer Forum

well it has been two weeks yesterday for the new Fahaka.... we are thinking of calling him "Deuce"... rolls off the tongue nicely.... i have him on a diet of bloodworms, clams, mussels and he ate a small pond snail that i have in my 36 that has been eating fairly good, i am in the process of setting up my other snail tank and will take all snails out of my 36 or as many as i can get and start populating more and then will start experimenting with fresh foods for the snails, will start with the list that we have here and on some other sites and see what kind of diet i can come up with for "Fresh Veggies" in Deuce's diet.... have ordered my vita chem, only place i can find it here is on fosters smith, no place in town stocks it so... that is on its way,

really trying to work on not overfeeding him but yet still getting him enough so he grows properly... that seems to be the big trick right now....

will also be getting some krill and silversides this week also...and start to introduce them into his tank....

any thought of setting up a Hermit crab tank or too and keeping some in QT at all times and rotating one of those in his diet when he gets bigger?

thoughts... concerns....

Fiddler crabs would be a better choice.

thanks pufferpunk, yep that is what i meant not hermit's, fiddlers....

I occasionally used to give mine red clawed crabs, they are cheap and hardy. I would swerve the krill as it has a link to lockjaw in puffers

bertie 83 wrote:I occasionally used to give mine red clawed crabs, they are cheap and hardy. I would swerve the krill as it has a link to lockjaw in puffers

really?

as in lots of krill or even just some amount to keep a diet balanced? interesting.... what i am really trying to do is find a good balance of nutrition so obviously if we know of something that may harm or cause issues i would try to avoid that, i have to imagine that foods in the wild, especially now with pollution, chem, etc... that where not present 100 years ago or even maybe 50 years ago have indeed now found their way in to the food system of these rare slash exotic fish or even fish in general... i would have to speculate that would have some type of carcinogenic effect on the overall effect of the fish... same as humans...

the more i have read now, it really seems to me that a balanced diet for a large snail population is going to be the best way to introduce good nutrition into the fish, so now it will become an issue of getting what i want in my fahaka into the snail... and then balance with mussles etc....


and i suppose we cant give a fahaka a tetnus shot to prevent lockjaw ?

Indeed lol. The thing with puffers and krill is they tend to develop a taste for that and only that, they refuse all else and bam next thing you know you are in trouble. Better to be safe than sorry eh? Worth skipping imo

Don't forget that Fahakas do outgrow most commonly cultured snails. At full size you are going to need fish market support.

I have an oriental market not to far from me. They have literally tons and tons of fish brought in.
They have clams and crayfish most of the time. So my question becomes how can I treat/be sure the food is safe to give the puffers?

I don't want any wild diseases or bacteria to enter the system and infect the puffer.

Will freezing the food solve this problem?

Also do we have a chart for Fahakas recommended food per weight / size ?
Something like this

Suggested Diet:
Size - Recommended Food - Recommended Feeding
1" - Bloodworm - 2 X per day
2" - Bloodworm / Krill - 2 X per day

If we did I think this would curve a lot of questions along with food prep , recommended vitamins and dosage sheet.
We are all searching for the same info but noone seems to have at least a jumping off point written down.

What are your thoughts?

Freezing the foods will indeed solve any potential issues. Feeding puffers is all about common sense, feed to a slightly rounded belly. You can add the crunchier foods at any point you like just make the pieces more tricky as soon as small bits of shell are no longer an issue

RTR wrote:Don't forget that Fahakas do outgrow most commonly cultured snails. At full size you are going to need fish market support.

yep, that is where the PEI mussels and green lip mussels come into play, that is the support, have a great store for those items... just want to make sure i have a good base for a diet...

Tripp wrote:I have an oriental market not to far from me. They have literally tons and tons of fish brought in.
They have clams and crayfish most of the time. So my question becomes how can I treat/be sure the food is safe to give the puffers?

I don't want any wild diseases or bacteria to enter the system and infect the puffer.

Will freezing the food solve this problem?

What are your thoughts?

i was under the impression and someone correct me if i am wrong, that foods that come from a saltwater source have different parasites etc.. then freshwater sources and therefore should not cause problems, i never had any problems that i knew of with my fahaka... for the most part freezing does destroy some bacteria and parasites however not all of them, cooking them to a temp of 265 will kill pretty much anything the Health dept would consider to be bad for humans... so if you are really worried cook it good and then cool it quickly and then you would be good to go...

HTH

The FW/SW dichotomy may not hold in markets. Handling of foods is supposed to be "clean" but don't bet your life, or your fish's lives, on it. Cross-contamination definitely happens. Freezing ans thawing will do in most bacteria and parasites.

Shaner, RTR you both make interesting points.

However I still think since we get a lot of the same style questions here on the board. We should document the info we know either in one long pdf or a goodle doc we can keep updated and build from that.
Ideal foods
Best food practices
How much is to much to feed (with pictures)

Why a min size tank is (X)

What do common illnesses look like and the fixes for them

The thing is we have more info on Green Spotted Puffers than anything else. Why is that? Because they are popularly sold in most LFS's.
So trial and error has happened a bunch.

We need something along these lines for us to jump start the new owners.
Am I off my rocker in thinking this?
This idea spawned from looking at the titles of the threads in different sections on this site.

You do NOT want to cook their food! Often makes it indigestible for them & cooks out a lot of nutritional value.

Pufferpunk wrote:You do NOT want to cook their food! Often makes it indigestible for them & cooks out a lot of nutritional value.

keep in mind tho crab legs and claws that we recommend on this site are cooked when one buys them...

i was just stating that in general if you are concerned heat will kill bacteria, the green lip mussels i fed achmed when we where in Minnesota with no source of mussels for ahwile where cooked and he did fine... that was over two years ago... the mussels that i fed him where fresh and alive until i froze them...