The Puffer Forum

Any reason not to feed? Do they carry diseases or parasites that affect our little puffs?

They're fine, as long as there are no fertilizers in the garden.

Brilliant, don't use anything on the garden, can't think why I didn't think of it before. Spent hours on the beach looking for crabs and hermit crabs, could only find ones bigger than Pig, so no use. Plus very Po faced family

I would not have thought to do those types of snails. Good job thinking outside the box!

Thanks! I'm trying to think of as many alternative foods as I can. Managed to find raw squid today, so Pig has that for dinner tonight.

I'm going to grab some snails from the garden and feed them up, is there any foodstuff that is bad to give them? I thought spinach, broccoli, cucumber and tomato would proceed him with some pretty broad second hand nutrition.

*provide

Not to derail. But how often are you doing a hard type food? That is what I need to find a good source for. All the soft stuff is not a problem and most of it is from the grocery store.

He has shell on tiger prawn with most feeds, he won't touch shellfish in the shell, I have to remove the meat and give it to him, otherwise it just lies there, bring ignored. I understand that they don't have problems with teeth over growing, unlike some others. I'm hoping he will have a go at the garden snails though.

Stratters wrote:I understand that they don't have problems with teeth over growing, unlike some others.

That was kind of my understanding but is seemed as if the need still existed for occasional hard food items.... so I was just see what the routine was like for most of the lurker owners out there.

Even soft food has crunch value...sort of. They will rub their "teeth" together when chewing. Sometimes you can hear it!

Puffers "chew" primarily with their pharyngeal teeth, not their incisors. Those teeth provide the "fines" you see ejected primarily through the gills. They do wear down the incisors if served bivalve food still attached to the half-shell - then they do abrade their incisors biting the meat away from the shell.