Top 3 Hard Foods for Freshwater Pufferfish
© Freshwater Pufferfish
It’s very important to offer your freshwater pufferfish a selection of hard, crunchy foods on a regular basis so that you don’t end up having fish problems with an overgrown beak.
If their beaks get too long, pufferfish will slowly starve to death because they can’t chew their food.
1. Snails. There are many species of snails to choose from that are perfect for small to midsized freshwater pufferfish. Many pet stores will give away pest snails species for free, like the Malaysian Trumpet Snail, common pond snails, and the occasional ramshorn snail if you ask them nicely on a slow day.
I recommend staying away from the trumpet snails because they have very hard shells, which could potentially lead to a cracked beak. However, I have fed some of my puffers very small trumpet snails when I was in a pinch with zero problems, so the choice is up to you. I’ve found that ramshorn snails multiply very quickly, so they are easy to keep on hand for your freshwater pufferfish once you have a colony established.
2. Whole pieces of lobster, crayfish and shrimp. You can buy trays of fresh whole shrimp, lobster and sometimes crayfish at most grocery stores. As long as your freshwater pufferfish is large enough to handle the size of the whole shellfish (cut down into chunks, of course), these are perfect to keep their teeth filed down – especially when they have gotten too big for most snail species. Just make sure that you are purchasing shellfish that still have their shell on – if the shell isn’t there, you lose the benefit of it being a hard food. All three are easy to freeze, and you may even be able to find pre-frozen bags of shrimp that still have their shell. **Edit: However, lobster and crayfish provide a better hard food than shrimp do; the shrimp’s shell gets too soft after it has been thawed out.
3. Clams. If you have one of the larger freshwater pufferfish species, like a Fahaka or Mbu, then clams are a great way to keep their teeth from overgrowing. They’re the perfect replacement for snails, and they are very easy to find at the grocery store. Just make sure you’re still offering your puffer a varied diet – like a combination of shrimp, clams, and crab legs.
There are plenty of other crunchy foods that you can offer your puffer – almost any type of crustacean will work. It may require a little bit of creative thinking on your part to get stubborn freshwater pufferfish to eat new foods, but in the end it will pay off. Trying to trim down a puffer beak is a very stressful event that can easily be prevented with a proper diet.
|
Like what you read?
If so, please take a minute to enter your name and email to get a FREE preview of my book, the Beginner's Guide to Keeping Freshwater Puffers.
|
|
I just bought a green spotted pufferfish from Wal-Mart and they don’t tell you about puffer care there at all
! I thought I was just suppose to give them fish flake food 
I’m glad I came across this page, Thanks for the great advice.
[...] then you will need to feed them a diet of hard foods. For instance, snails are great way to keep puffer beaks trimmed down. In addition to snails, you can also use whole shrimp, clams, and other types of [...]