The Puffer Forum

As some of you may remember, when I got Justin last year, he was only being fed live feeders and I had a helluva time training him to eat dead foods. But eventually he started eating frozen shrimp, silversides and mussels (out of the shell) with gusto (usually after being allowed to get really hungry, then banging him in the face with the food until he bit it and figured it was tasty).

He showned no interest in live bloodworms since I got him and I was loathe to keep offering them as I inevitably ended up sucking them out of the gravel when I did the cleaning. I think he thought they were too small to bother with, too, seeing as how he's a good 5" and quite rotund. Lately, however, I thought I noticed a coveting look in his eye when I would feed the worms to Linus. He would watch Linus eat through the egg crate divider, but it didn't dawn on me until today that he might be interested in eating them. Ok, yes, I can be a bit thick sometimes.

So tonight, I finally grew a brain and figured out how to feed Justin some blackworms. I used a half of a scallop shell for a dish, one of the spares that i have for the hermit crabs. Duh! Being the shy lurker that he is, he sort of slowly moved toward them as I moved further away from the tank. I went on to finish feeding everyone else, and when I came back by about 2 minutes later, the shell was empty! I could almost see him smile as he looked up at me.

Meanwhile, it was Linus' turn to sit on his side of the divider and watch Justin eat. It reminded me of the Spongebob episode where they have candybars and Patrick eats all of his, then says "Hey, where's mine?" forgetting that he'd already eaten it. Unfortunately for him, he is a tad too big to fit through the holes, not that he didn't try. Tomorrow, I think I'll move the shells further away from the divider on each side.

AWE They do love to eat.

He normally only eats every 4-5 days, with a couple of snails in between, but I think it'll be safe to give him a little snack of worms here and there, too, now that I know he'll eat them and likes them.

you watch spongebob..........?

I have, on rare occasions, had the misfortune of having to watch with my younger son. I hate it, and of course 3 out of the 4 times I seem to have watched it have been that same episode.

My mom did something similar for our community tank--she wedged a little ramekin (like you bake single-serving custards in) into the gravel and put worms in it with a turkey baster. The worms lasted a longer time that way and the sides of the dish were too steep for them to wriggle out of.

I moved the shell to the other side of his area tonight and tried again. Within a minute of my leaving the tank, they were gone. Its my believe that he didn't know they were good eats until he saw Linus eating them.

Oh the joys of owning puffers!