Post Puffer and tank experiences

[Fishnthecorner]

Do you see him moving his jaw? What percentage of his diet consists of krill? Krill has been known to cause "locked-jaw" where the puffer cannot move his jaws and as a result cannot eat, and eventually dies of starvation.

Does he eat marine-based seafood? whole shrimp, hard-shelled clams, mussels, scallops, etc? these are the food that should be fed to him as puffers need the nutritions found in seafood. otherwise, over time he would develop locked-jaw from lack of proper nutritions.

He is not moving his jaw... If this is "lockjaw" What can I do?
The only thing that would lead me to belive it is not lockjaw, is the fact that he is not interested in food at all...

How do you "force feed" a puffer?

 

[sandwi54]

He is not moving his jaw... If this is "lockjaw" What can I do?
The only thing that would lead me to belive it is not lockjaw, is the fact that he is not interested in food at all...

How do you "force feed" a puffer?

If his jaw is not moving, then it's lockjaw. It's common for puffers to lose interests in food and stop eating once lockjaw happens. I have no personal experience with lockjaw but I've heard in a few cases, the condition can be reversed if the proper diet is fed immediately. I would assume you'd have to force feed by perhaps squirting the food into his mouth.

Kelly Jedlicki (AKA the puffer queen) is the puffer expert and also the person who discovered the cause of lockjaw after research. She's active on the marinedepot forum and you may want to do some research there and perhaps email her about the condition. Please see the following link.

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic72164.aspx

 

[tanksfishtank]

Sandwi54, Love the puffer tank! How long have you had them and where did you get them from? My LFS never gets any rare puffers like those in! Do you have anything else in there with them? Absolutely love the tank!!!

 

[silentcivilian]

i love the golden puffer. My experiance was negative. I had a porcupine puffer. Beautiful blueish eyes too. But sadly, with my live stock being slower too feed, and him being a garberator, I needed to get rid of him as no one else was capable of feeding.

 

[sandwi54]

Sandwi54, Love the puffer tank! How long have you had them and where did you get them from? My LFS never gets any rare puffers like those in! Do you have anything else in there with them? Absolutely love the tank!!!

Thanks fishtank. I got the golden puffer from DD and guineafowl from LFS. Most LFS don't carry rare fish like that without having a buyer lined up, simply because these fish are too expensive and they don't want to risk losing them in their tanks.

Tankmates are french angel, majestic angel, naso tang, bariene tang, and a pair of pyramid butterflies. They are due for a bigger tank lol...

 

[Flaring Afro]

My green spotted and valentini have gotten along without any problems or aggression in my tank. Due to the valentini's long narrow beak reaching under shells and the GSP's power to pull small to medium snails off of glass/rock, turbo snails are the only kind of clean up crew I can have. Well worth it though, especially for the GSP.

I also feed them snails from a freshwater tank to keep their teeth from overgrowing.

 

[91Atrac]

Here are my guineafowl and golden puffers. They are fed shelled foods regularly and those trim their teeth. They also bite on the live rocks. I never had to manually trim their teeth.

The black spotted one looks like he should be in a horror movie haha


Sent from Q's iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Wistler]

I have a blue spot toby currently but I am thinking of trading him for a dogfaced puffer.

I have read that many feed the larger puffers clams on the halfshell, which I assume are what my food store calls "little neck" clams. Do these 6-9" puffers swallow the entire quarter sized piece of shell??

I figured instead of opening the clam with a knife it might be better/easier to smash the clam with a hammer and let the puffer sift through the pieces and meat and trim his beak that way.

Also, my food store gets little mesh bags of clams every so often and I was wondering if you can feeze clams like shrimp for future use.

I was in LA last week with my buddy who owns a LFS and got to see A LOT of puffers at the wholesalers. I just dont know which species to choose

 

[sandwi54]

The black spotted one looks like he should be in a horror movie haha


Sent from Q's iPhone using Tapatalk

haha yeah, but she's the cutest little puffer i've ever seen.

 

[Wistler]

I'm not trying to side track this awesome thread, but after spending a week in LA and seeing so many fish, I am really drawn to a 4-5" Dogface puffer.

After my 180 FOWLR is done its fallow period it will be ready to re stock. I had a bad experience with my blue spot toby nipping circular bite sized fins out of tank mates.

Can I do a dogfaced puffer with say a 6" Magnificent Foxface, Orange Shoulder Tang, yellow tang and couple wrasses?

I see a lot of tanks with just a puffer, eel and trigger and I was hoping to have a couple tangs for color and flash.

 

[Wistler]

I'm not trying to side track this awesome thread, but after spending a week in LA and seeing so many fish, I am really drawn to a 4-5" Dogface puffer.

After my 180 FOWLR is done its fallow period it will be ready to re stock. I had a bad experience with my blue spot toby nipping circular bite sized holes out of tank mates' fins.

Can I do a dogfaced puffer with say a 6" Magnificent Foxface, Orange Shoulder Tang, yellow tang and couple wrasses?

I see a lot of tanks with just a puffer, eel and trigger and I was hoping to have a couple tangs for color and flash.

 

[sandwi54]

I'm not trying to side track this awesome thread, but after spending a week in LA and seeing so many fish, I am really drawn to a 4-5" Dogface puffer.

After my 180 FOWLR is done its fallow period it will be ready to re stock. I had a bad experience with my blue spot toby nipping circular bite sized holes out of tank mates' fins.

Can I do a dogfaced puffer with say a 6" Magnificent Foxface, Orange Shoulder Tang, yellow tang and couple wrasses?

I see a lot of tanks with just a puffer, eel and trigger and I was hoping to have a couple tangs for color and flash.

That will be perfectly fine. Dog-faced puffer is one of the least aggressive puffers and usually does not harass tankmates. As long as there are no fish that are small enough that the puffer could eat, you should be fine. Tangs, angels, etc. are perfect tankmates.

 

[thebluepond]

Have a beautiful 9-10 inch stars and stripes, 5 inch porcupine, and 4 inch dogface. These guys have so much personality...love squid, octopus, clams. The seafood mix at sams club is a great buy!

 

[thebluepond]

Thinking of adding some mushrooms, cabbage and other low light corals...anyone have experience doing this successfully?

 

[Wistler]

@bluepond...Do you have them in the same tank? I didnt think you could keep more than one puffer in the same tank. I have a blue spot toby and was warned that two of them together would result in them chasing each other around like mini tornadoes in the tank. I would love to have a dogface and a porcupine puffer like the one smiling above.

 

[thebluepond]

Yep all together...would not recommend two of the same, but have had no problems with the different puffers...been together for some time...feeding time is the only time they get a little testy with each other. Dog face is the shyest, and I have to make sure he gets fed by distracting the two others.

 

[thebluepond]

anyone on the cabbage/mushroom with puffer question?

 

[91Atrac]

How's everyone's experience with the Valentini puffers. They seem very peaceful and don't grow very big.


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[deepblue68]

my sharpnose toby puffer(Canthigaster solandri ). great fish and never had a problem with its teeth,it takes care of it itself by scraping liverock and eating clams on the halfshell.

 

[91Atrac]

That's a pretty puffer man. Sounds like she's a low maintenance girl


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