The Puffer Forum

I was just wondering what kind of snails people use to feed their dwarf puffers. I'm gonna have a small setup for breeding them and was wondering what kinds are best. Ramshorns are obv a bit big and MTS are too hard.

Or is it more common to use some other kind of food for keeping their beak at a manageable size?

turtledove

If you breed ramshorns, you can offer them the tiny baby snails when they are roughly the size of the puffers eye.

i use mainly small common pond snails myself, but do use small ramshorns also.

Do you breed the pond snails or just harvest them from a pond?

With DPs, you don't have to worry about their teeth. Unlike other puffers, DPs teeth don't really overgrow, so the snails are more of a snack than a vital part of tooth care.

I still think snails are important.

I would set up a breeder tank for pond snails. You can get them for free on plants from your lfs.

Just a thought, as ramshorns are too large for them to eat, would it be viable to have some in the tank with them and they can eat the baby snails as well as the ones I put in the tank myself?

my DPs will eat a full grown ramshorn if i smash it first. (not ALL of it though)

heh, watch out when you smash snail shells. I gashed myself pretty bad, and I didnt even realize it until AFTER I had moved my zoanthid frag around a bit. I was like oh S**T!!!!! I started freaking out that I was gonna die and everything. i'm still here lol.

thats why you use foreign objects to smash thin shelled things...

I captive breed all my feeder snails. That is far safer and healthier.

The Fisherman wrote:my DPs will eat a full grown ramshorn if i smash it first. (not ALL of it though)

I thought your puffs weren't eating.

turtledove, I see no problem with adding the adults to your DP tank, the only problems are a) They are likely to be picked at by your DP's, and most importantly b) To really get breeding going, you have to over-feed and over-change the water of your snail breeding tank. Not recommended for your puffers though!

lisalisa wrote:

The Fisherman wrote:my DPs will eat a full grown ramshorn if i smash it first. (not ALL of it though)

I thought your puffs weren't eating.

no, they werent when I talked to you earlier that day.

I tried the full grown Ramshorn after you had logged off.

And yep, I did use a foriegn object to smash the snail (i may be stupid, but im not that stupid ) which is why i still cant figure out how i managed to cut myself......


oh, i took your advice Lisa and got some blackworms! my DPs LOVE them!!!!!! they stuffed their tummys full of em! its kinda weird though, cuz the black worms that didnt get eaten went inside the DW before i could suck them out....

---

My DP loves to ambush blackworms so he can get filled up before the other puffs get to them.

Cool, so ramshorns can be used as food too....however, can anyone answer my previous question....would a fully grown (non crushed )ramshorn survive in the tank? It would be handy to have them growing in there so they could have a food source growing in the tank with them.

turtledove