The Puffer Forum

Hello everyone. Me and my husband have a MBU puffer about 5 inches long, including tail. Had him roughly 2-3 months now. Tank temp is about 82-83 right now and its a 30 gallon tank, which is a temp tank. He will be getting a larger tank soon. Always been a good eater, mostly shrimp, cooked and raw with the occasional nuisance snails from the lfs and ghost shrimp.

He is housed with 2 frontosas, who stay to themselves, except feeding time. A pleco is in there as well. Our puffer, Mr Lovegrove, has stopped eating the shrimp. Been about 4 days now and all he does eat, that we see, is the snails. Do these guys get "bored" with the same food, maybe thats why he wont eat shrimp?

My husband says he noticed some marks on the puffer...and thinks maybe the frontosas have been picking on him. We havent seen anything like that, so we don't know for sure. And tonight when we turned the light on, he was on the gravel and was almost rubbing his chin on the gravel, like it itched. What could that be?

My husband wants to add some melafix to the tank and we separated the frontosas from the puffer. Is melafix ok to use on puffers? The label seems to support that but I would like someone who knows about these puffers to help out.

He is eating the snails...so I am happy about that. We just cant seem to find any specific info on these guys online. Its all too generalized.

I really hope some of you here can help us out. Thanks!!

Welcome to the site!
For other food options check out the food article in the library.
Maybe he was trying to bury himself or he has ich. Melafix is fine to use.

I'd check the water perameters & post them here. I'll bet the nitates are high. You have quite a bioload in that tank! Good thing you took the frontosas out. Please read the article here about them, stickied in this forum.

uprade his tank ASAP

The battle scars could come from the plec at night time. Your puffer will be resting in the dark and along comes mr nocturnal plec and bumps into him, this makes the puffer react quickly and could be bumping into decor. I have a Mbu too and I'm sure you will have noticed the great info here on this site about them. I would definately suggets you buy/build the largest tank you canafford and accomodate, they get big and they get big fast.

I would follow the other advice given and check your water for any pointers. Good Luck

Yes we are going to upgrade his tank soon. There's a lot of rocks, gravel and some fake plants in there with the fish. Is this too much decor?

Thanks for all who answered this. He is still acting the same, still not eating shrimp...he only wants snails. Is this something he will grow out of and start eating shrimp again? I don't know if he is eating the ghost shrimp...they are hard to spot once they are in the tank.

Any shrimp in a Mbu tank will either be in his tummy or hiding away. Mbu need a lot of turning space and swimming room and if he's after food they tend to take no prisoners so it could be clashes with the decor that have caused the marks. They will disappear in time though but I would look at the layout of the tank when you ste up the new one. I have set mine up with all decor arounf the edges of the tank and plenty of open space. Check out my pics

http://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/vie ... php?t=7069

No offense, but I hope you're aware that the Mbu puffer can get approximately 30" long.

Long term, expect to provide him with a tank that's around 1000 gallons.

For now I would make sure the puffer is the only fish in the tank. You should do very frequent water changes to keep the water quality as good as possible. I'd do 25% every day. See how the puffer responds to this before treating it. Get that fish in a larger tank as quick as you can.

There's an article on feeding puffers on the forum. It's best to give the puffer a widely varied diet.