The Puffer Forum

I have 2 Dwarf Puffer fish I brought home 3 days ago. I'm concerned as they are not interested the frozen blood worms I'm giving them and their rather lethargic, not swimming around much. My tank is a fluval edge 6 gallon and the Pufffers are the only fish in this tank. My ammonia and nitrites are fine, the nitrates are at 5.0. I ordered some ramshorn snails off of ebay which should be here in a couple of days but should I be concerned with them not eating? Should I try and feed them something else before snails arrive? Is there lack of swimming around normal for being in a new tank? Also, I ordered these from my LFS which they had to order from their supplier as they don't stock these in the store. Apparently they arrived Thursday night and when I picked them up on Friday at around 5pm they were still in the small shipping bag. I thought that was a bit crazy that the store left them in the bag for so long. If anyone has any suggestions or information on this, I would appreciate it.

By "fine", do you mean 0? How was the tank cycled? Try live worms, that's all mine will eat--spoiled brats!

If they were still in that shipping bag, they may have ensued permanent damage to their respiratory systems, from ammonia poisoning.

In my experience, dwarf puffers are the most picky eaters of all the puffer species. I put mine in a heavily planted tank that had a well established red cherry shrimp and ramshorn snail population, and I also had a supplier for live blackworms lined up. They never accepted any sort of dead or pelleted food, even frozen bloodworms, they would much prefer to hunt for food themselves. Red cherry shrimp breed very easily, so consider raising those, or ask your LFS if they sell live blackworms or know anyone that does.

I personally don't suggest putting dwarf puffers into anything BUT an already established, planted tank with a lot of live goodies for them to hunt.. for the reason that they often won't eat anything else.

Thanks for the replies. I think I'm in for a battle with these guys as far as eating goes. I think I'll try the shrimp approach but these puffers are very very tiny...they look like they were just born a couple of days ago so I'm not sure if they'll be able to take on anything too big. I saw some ghost shrimp that looked pretty small, I may try those. Another issue is all those frozen bloodworms that the puffers didnt eat, should i be cleaning them up daily? Do you think a Corydora would be okay to put in the tank with them to at all the leftovers?

Yes, you should be cleaning up the uneaten food. Corydoras are armored catfish, BUT dwarf puffers are mean little suckers that can and will nip fish to death. Corys are so sweet and have no sense of territory that they'd probably often wander into their way. The shrimp will do clean up work for you, so that's an added bonus, but you'll have to give them lots of hiding places like wood pieces and heavy planting or the puffers will kill and eat them all right away.