The Puffer Forum

I tried a different way of feeding my f8s this morning.

I stuck the bit of shrimp on a wooden skewer and pushed it down to the blunt end.

Put that end in the water and ran it around the tank and the f8s had great fun ripping bits off it. I even simulated aggression by running it towards them which gave both them and me much more entertainment than just dropping it in

Also when a large bit of shell started to come loose I'd break it off so i didn't leave anything rotting in the tank and the majority of the shell stayed on the skewer so it was no fuss at all to take it out (as opposed to netting it out as I often did before)

Also tried to get them to jump for it - no real success but they did poke their beaks out

Pragmatism works - which means that if it works, use it. But don't get fish so spoiled that if you don't have time to play, they may not eat.

Nice one, thanks

Try not to encourage jumping, if they learn they can do it they could end up on the floor, or they could ingest air which is not good

Ah yeah! Good point!! Didn't think that one through x]

I learned about teaching fish to jump for food with my first breeding pair of Oscars. Mopping up splashed-out water with bleeding fingers is no fun at all! And you cannot scrub up for days (lost work time). That was dropped fast.

Doesn't sound great! what do you mean by scrub up?

I did biomedical research - masks and gloves and scrub suits and layers of gloves after scrubing up...You cannot work if you have broken skin on your hands/forearms. Not a good thing when I was supposed to be head of the group.

slightly off topic- man RTR, you're a man who wears many hats. someone needs to write a book about you!

Oh right!! I can't imagine it went down great when you told them why you couldn't come in

LOL! The bad part is that I still had to be there, to monitor and insure things were still done by SOP. It was not only embarrassing, it was a huge loss/waste of time.

The work was always interesting and challenging. Too bad it did not pay very well.