Beauty of a puffer at LFS...quick advice on tankmates

[sandwi54]

What a cute doggie Larry! His colors and personality are simply stunning. Two advice from me though:

1. try not to take puffers out of the water. the reason is if he gets scared he would puff with air, and he would not be able to expel air. It's a stressful and dangerous situation.

2. His teeth are starting to look a bit long. Have you been feeding him hard-shelled food? Clams, mussels, etc. should be given at least 2-3 times a week to help them trim their teeth.

It looks like Maxwell acclimated well and is going into a good home

 

[Wistler]

Sandwi,

You are 100% right! I am aware that puffers shouldn't be taken out of water, but after a total devastation on that 180 tank due to Ich I wasn't taking any chances dumping water from one tank to the next...even if it was my own QT....Not to mention we have been hand feeding and "petting" this fish in his tub for 2 months so I was pretty confident that nothing gets him to puff up, because I have never seen him do it yet. My wife did that on the one video just for a second to show some non-believers just how personable a fish can be. Now that he is in his home no would should be handling him.

We do feed him pieces of king crab legs and when I can get them I smash a clam with a hammer and let him pick all through it. I am hoping that some coraline algae starts to grow if I boost Mag as I have read puffers will trip their own teeth on the LR.

I plan on getting him some frozen mussels today. I was trying to avoid really messy foods while he was in QT to avoid ammonia spikes and such.

Trimming his beak is not something I want to do!

 

[sandwi54]

Hi Larry,
You are right. When there is enough algae growth on the live rocks, puffers generally bite off small chunks of rocks and eat the algae. My golden puffer does that all day long. This is good for the puffers as they certainly need to have some veggie content in their diets.

When you get mussels, see if you can find the green-shelled mussels from Australia. It's the kind that buffets generally offer (the ones that are baked with cheese on top). It's very meaty and has a lot of nutritional values compared to the regular mussels.

If you can find it, cockles offer a good diet as it does not contain much thiaminase, which is detrimental to puffer's health if consumed regularly over time. I would also soak the food in Kent Zoe, which contains Thiamine (Vitamin B1) that can balance/neutralize the Thiaminase found in most seafood. For more information, please read the following link.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_6/volume_6_1/thiaminase.htm

Leo

 

[Cicatrix]

Great looking fish!

 

[Wistler]

Thanks for the info Leo on the Zoe. I currently rotate between Selcon, Vita Chem and Zoe on a regular basis. Should I only use Zoe for my puffer?

Also, what other frozen seafood and fresh veggies do you offer your puffer?

My Blue spot toby eats Nori like a Tang, but all my Dogface puffer does is punch holes in the sheet of Nori I hang in the tank for the tang and fox face.

He really isn't ingesting any as far as I can tell.

Worst case, what if my puffer doesn't grind his beak down.....then what? Do you use a dog nail clipper to nip the tips off?

I read somewhere that you rub their belly with clove oil and it put them in a sedated state, but it sounded like voodoo to me.....LOL

Thanks for any advice on our first DFP...

Larry

 

[sandwi54]

No problem Larry.

Rotating between different vitamin supplements is fine. I add both selcon and zoe together to my puffer's food.

My golden puffer would only eat clams and mussels and does not eat anything that doesn't contain shells, except for PE mysis and krills (which I limit to only once a week). I think the main reason is that he's big at 9" and has already developed a specific diet in the wild. I'm just starting to think that I should put him back into QT, starve him for a few days, and try to get him to learn how to eat other foods.

My 3" dogface puffer, on the other hand, eats pretty much anything. I feed him shrimps, clams, mussels, and silversides. He also eats the brine and mysis shrimps when I feed them to the other fish.

You need to prevent overgrown teeth as much as possible. It's difficult on small puffers as their teeth are not strong enough to crack open shells yet, but any opportunity they get to chew on the shells should be given. Worst comes to worst, you will have to clip the teeth off with nail clippers. I have done that once and it's not fun.

The key to good puffer health is a wide variety of diet. Actually, that's true for any fish

Leo