The Puffer Forum

Picking up my puffers tomorrow so of course will need some food, what do you guys recommend?
Hoping to get some Malaysian trumpet snails of them for free too, but don't mind paying for a couple.
Does anyone else feed they puffers these? I understand once or twice a week is good to give them snails,
Also do you think these snails could be bread, I have a small spare tank doing nothing.

What type of puffer? Unless it is a dwarf puffer (thats sucks the snail out rather than crushing it) the mts snails will be too hard and can cause tooth damage. You want to aim for pond or ramshorn snails. Both of these are prolific breeders and breeding articles can be found in the library.

Sorry should have said, figure of 8 puffers,

Yes mts are going to be too hard. If you can find a couple chain pet stores with fish sections one of them is bound to have a pest snail problem. Which is good for us. They will normally give you these for free. They will be pond and ramshorns.

I used to feed mine thawed shrimp from a supermarket
To entertain them (and me :p) i used to stick the shrimp on a wooden skewer, (push it down to the blunt end so i didn't kebab them) and run it around the tank for them to chase
Mine got aggressive towards each other, particularly over food so i had to stop that eventually. The aggression progressed and I chose to trade them at a good LFS for their sake.

Well I asked for some MTS and they didn't have any, but like you said had some pest snails in another tank.
He netted out a good handful, nice and small, so I put a few in with the puffers and they soon buried themselves (probably a wise move) the rest in a tank with a goldfish hopefully they will breed there so I have a nice supply.
The puffers are exploring more now after 8 hours in the tank and just eaten some food.
Gave them a little frozen block of Mysis which didn't last long, also got some bloodworms .

MTS snails are said to be too hard for puffers teeth and are even said to break them - they are also said to multiply like crazy so you may have avoided a disaster there.

I throw snails in the tank occasionally for my GSP and s/he
goes absolutely psycho crazy for them They don't bury themselves though, but my tank is full salt so I would be surprised to see them do anything in there other than get eaten.

Hope you're not making the same mistake I did and dropping the food in still frozen! Apparently makes them more susceptible to disease.

What saliniity is your tank?

Fed my puffers last night with the Mysis last night which they soon finished of and bloodworm today, which also soon got eaten.
These of course are frozen cubes, I don't just drop the cubes in but just rub them with my fingers whilst in the water,
They soon real up and the bits get around the tank being chased by the fish.
Not sure if any snails been eaten yet as I have not seen them doing it, but they have been pecking at the sand.
The salt levels are 1.005

It is best to defrost & then rinse the "juice" form the cubes in a brine shrimp net, to keep the nitrate to a minimum.

@john
Cool
Are these your first puffers?
Something neat to look out for is that they will blow water at the sand to move it and will also shoot fine sand out of their gills when they dig

Also, keep an eye out for white marks (especially ring-shaped) on the flesh and damage to fins. These are signs that they may be fighting - In my opinion, such wounds aren't necessarily a reason to panic but certainly something to watch out for. If the aggression gets really bad, I would recommend separating them.

Browse some of the articles in the library section of the website if you haven't already
Especially articles by RTR

Yep my first ever puffer tank.
Been keeping fish for years but my first brackish tank and who can resist there funny little faces.
Been feeding them there frozen food for just under a week now and they love it, even getting close to my fingers whilst I let it go, dropped a few snails in but not seen any action with those, I have seen them look in the sand and spotted a empty shell so I guess they are hunting them.

Puffydave wrote:Yep my first ever puffer tank.
Been keeping fish for years but my first brackish tank and who can resist there funny little faces.
Been feeding them there frozen food for just under a week now and they love it, even getting close to my fingers whilst I let it go, dropped a few snails in but not seen any action with those, I have seen them look in the sand and spotted a empty shell so I guess they are hunting them.

very cool, i wish i could have got mine to do that!

Probably a good way to keep them happy with something to do