The Puffer Forum

I have a king kong/humpback puffer, and I have had him for about 1 month now. Everything is going great. He has be trained to take frozen shrimp. He he calm, except when I clean his tank he gets me kind of nervous because he looks at my arm the same way he looks at his frozen shrimp, and starts to swim towards me. So I clean my tank with one hand, and in the other hand I have a net to keep him away. I don't want a chunk out of my arm. I see what he does to those shrimp.

I have one question though. I feed him every-other day, and when I feed him the shrimp he attacks it when I first put it in there, and he will keep taking bites out of it until he seems bored with it. I will leave the shrimp in there over night, but he never eats the whole thing.

He get a big belly after he eats the shrimp, but I have heard on hear that most of your puffers will just keep eating if there is food present. Is my fish different? I really am not worried but I would just like to hear what you all have to say. Thanks

I would take the shrimp out after (s)he is done going at it. Leaving it in the tank basically allows ammonia and nitrite to spike.

How big is your little fella? You might be feeding him more then he can take in his belly.

He is about 4". Will ammonia spike in 4 hours from from shrimp? I check the levels daily and I have not had any spikes

4 hours won't likely spike it, but it would be decomposing pretty much immediately, albeit slowly.

My puffer will get full if I give him a large meal and will just swim away, looking embarassed to have eaten that much. :p