The Puffer Forum

I have 4 SAPs I got from a very reputable store about a month ago. they assured me they had been through 2 round of all the meds, they look healthy and active. I've tried frozen food, live, pellets but the only thing they seemed to like was frozen blood worms and live adult brine shrimp. I put rams horn snails every few days. I'm trying to grow the brine shrimp because it's very hit or miss if my pet store has any for sale, but it's taking a while. the snails they just snatch the head off and leave the rest which is doing nothing for their teeth, if I break the shell first they just pick around the shell. and for the past few days they don't seem interested in the blood worms either. I have a cherry shrimp tank because originally they were gonna be live food for my puffers and I tried to feed them 1 but I felt so bad for my poor shrimp I saved him and realized I love them to much to serve them up as a snack lol. I tried live black worms but they are hard to find consistently and they are disgusting lol.

I have 2 female baby German blue rams and 1 adult male molly(he was a unplanned addition) and everyone else is eating and acting normal.

when I first got them they raced the glass for a day or so but then seemed to relax. for the last 5 or 6 days they are back to racing. I've moved plants Infront of the glass to try and break their focus but it's not working.

the details:
30 gallon tank that cycled w/o fish for 1.5 months
I have plenty of java ferns, Thor's hammer, Anubis, drift wood, rocks arranged to break line of sight. fine sand as bottom layer. I even have a pond lilly that's growing so fast with big Lilly pads to create cover.

ph 7.2
ammonia 0
No2 0
No3 5ppm

20% water change/gravel vac weekly
aquarium co-op fertilizer weekly
api stress coat with water change

so far my SAPs don't even really pay much attention to the other fish they pretty much just hang out together, they would come up to the glass when they saw me. but now they spend their time just looking like they want out of the box they are stuck in. they have no external signs of disease and neither do my other fish.

I have loved all puffers my whole life and I have done extensive reaserch way before I got on the waiting list for these fish. but if I could take them back to the Amazon river and set them free I would because getting snatched from a big river and put in a bag, then on a plane, then being stuck in a glass box forever is sad and puffers are smarter than your average fish and they can see very far out the tank which is nice because they recognize me; so now I feel like I'm just holding them prisoner .

so my questions are:
1. will they stop racing the glass?
2. why won't they eat anything besides the faces off of rams horn snails?
3. there mouths are so tiny so how do I know when to be worried about the size of their beak?
4. is there any other way to get them to wear their beak down naturally besides snails?
5. should I add some schooling fish to give them more stimulation? I am confident they wouldn't eat them but I don't want to overstock my tank and maybe that would just stress them out more.

1. Probably not, they are high-energy fish.
2. Crush the snails, they will scrape the shell to get the meat out.
3. They won't be able to close their mouth.
4. ?
5. Your tank is already overstocked.

https://www.pufferfishenthusiastsworldw ... susasellus

Pufferpunk wrote: ↑Sat May 21, 2022 10:41 am 1. Probably not, they are high-energy fish.
2. Crush the snails, they will scrape the shell to get the meat out.
3. They won't be able to close their mouth.
4. ?
5. Your tank is already overstocked.

https://www.pufferfishenthusiastsworldw ... susasellus

Thanks to Pufferpunk for sharing the link, it seems to be a really helpful source, I'll check it out.