The Puffer Forum

I've had my F8 for 3 days now and have been feeding him bloodworm once a day, but today fed him his first cockle. I was wondering if there's any guide as to how often to feed cockles? Is it a food to give every so often to keep his beak down? Or should it be fed to him every day?
Also, are there any other foods that anyone could recommend to me? I've also read about feeding live brine shrimp for treats - is this a healthy option for my little puff? Thanks in advance!

heres what i feed my figure eight puffers:

snails, bloodworm, mosquito larvae, mussels, cockles, prawn in shell, live baby brine shrimp/daphnia/bloodworm/feeder shrimp.

its adviable to give them something to keep their beak worn down, and i use snails which i breed myself in a small tank in the kitchen, and i also give them mussels in the shell and shell on king prawns.

they get live feeder shrimp as a treat once a week.

I feed my puffers every other day, sometimes every day, but i only give them small amounts.

The diet indie is using sounds fine to me, not very differnt from what I have done other than that I never use live brine other than for new purchases which are hesitant about accepting foods at first. Live brine shrimp have very little food value other than newly hatch baby brine shrimp, which are nutritious, but too small for most puffers. Live brine is good for inducing new fish to eat.

The majority of my feeding would be snails mostly, shell-on shellfish second. The others for treats.

I feed my F8 in a very similar way, the only difference is that I feed slightly less one time to another, really only to mimic what he would get in the wild.

I offer him live and frozen bloodworms and snails mostly and twice a week a treat of mussel or prawns. One day a week I don't feed anything.

I have fed brine shrimp and even attempted to breed them but as RTR said they aren't worth the effort.

Those sound like good varied diets... do you keep live stuff around, or do you purchase them every time?

That probably sounds like a dumb question, but I've been trying to wrap my head around the logistics of feeding (going to be getting a couple F8s soon). The only predator fish we've ever had was a piranha, which we fed frozen krill. Can you keep blood worms or black worms around? What do they live in? What about mussels, crabs, snails? Do you breed your snails?

Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread, but I thought the question was along the same lines as the original poster.

I have a snail breeder with pond/ramshorn. The live bloodworms I buy from my supplier the day he gets them and I feed daily until they have gone or don't wriggle much, I keep in a sealed container in the fridge.

Bloodworms are usually frozen or freeze dried. I've never seen or heard of them for sale live. Live blackworms can be kept and bred indefinitely if properly cared for. Mine are in a tupperware type container with just enough water to cover them, in the fridge. They last for weeks that way.

I recommend the food articles in our Library.

I have had this before, in the UK we are sold "bloodworms" but they are not the same as in the USA. There they seem to be quite big.

What we get are normally 3/4 -1" long and approximately 1/16 diameter and red!