The Puffer Forum

I am breeding ramshorn snails and ghost shrimp for my future GSP. How often can I feed ghost shrimp? I was thinking maybe snails five days out of the week, ghost shrimp one day, and krill/blood worms/brine shrimp one day? Does that sound good? I want to make sure that my GSP gets the most out of his diet.

Also, should I feed my ghost shrimp and ramshorn snails any protein foods for gutloading? Like, should I give them bloodworms and brine shrimp or should I stick to veggies and spirulina?

Thank you very much for helping me out so much Puffer community!

Variety is key as most of the experts in here will agree, as far as types of food goes I vary my GSP's diet between blood worms, Mysis shrimp, live snails 3 x/week, shell on shrimp, scallops and squid. I will give him some other live food such as ghost and cherry shrimp to chase around as well which I gut load with algae wafers prior to feeding, once he gets a little bigger I will try some small crayfish and hermit crabs. Another good thing to do which Puffer Punk recommended to me was soaking frozen foods in Vita-Chem for a few minutes prior to feeding, gives the extra vitamins they may be missing from their diet. As far as Krill goes, I do feed it to him but only once/week as the whole lock jaw thing scares me, Hope this helps.

Correction to my prior post...omit hermit crabs, I meant small fiddler or red-claw crabs

Thank you very much Rudy! This is very helpful =) How big are the fiddler/red claw crabs compared to the size of the puffer when you feed them to him? Can they hurt the puffer at all? Thank you!

My GSP is roughly 2 inches and I've seen some nice red claw crabs roughly the size of a nickel at my LFS that I'm sure he will be able to handle. I plan on removing pinchers before feeding it to my puffer, unfair I know but I don't want him to get nipped.

It must be quite a sight to watch a puffer go after a crab. I don't know if I'll ever feed live crabs though, I don't want my puffer to get hurt and I couldn't get myself to cut off the poor crab's "hands". I'm just a bleeding heart, I know. lol Let me know how it goes though! Thank you for all of your help!