porcupine puffer food?

[boxfishpooalot]

What do you feed your porcupine puffer? My girlfriend wanted one, and now im stuck trying to get it to eat.

So far it at 1 mysid shrimp. All it does is sit on the bottom of the sand.

Thanks box :)

[boxfishpooalot]

nobody has one?

[splateee]

Our Dogface puffer goes nuts over frozen Krill. We also feed it shrimp and crab meat.

[monicaswizzle]

Boxfish--

I have no experience with puffers of any kind. That said, I have been trying to coax a Whitley's boxfish to eat. No luck, not even with live food (saltwater shrimp and black worms). I was looking through an "old" (1980's) marine hobby book and they talked about coaxing difficult fish to eat. They suggested buying fresh mussels, breaking open the shell and putting the shell and all in the tank. My boxfish goes nuts over these. He bites down on the mussel flesh and swims all around the tank "shaking his head" until the flesh finally breaks off in his mouth and the shell drops back to the sand. I have no idea if puffers are "supposed to eat" mussel, but you might give it a try. All of my tank seems to love the mussel. Even the purple tang tries to push the boxfish out so that it can get a nip.

Good luck!

[Ritten]

My son's will only freeze dried Krill. We have tried everything else, shrimp (fresh) myasis, you name it.

[LittlePuff]

Krill, shrimp, crabs, snails, mussel, clams, and plankton.

[JokerGirl]

My brackish water puffer eats live shrimp, freeze dried shrimp, snails, and mussels.

One thing you might try doing is putting some food in when the lights are out. I've had great success with getting new fish to eat by doing that.

[luke33]

Krill, shrimp, mysis and brime shrimp. But loves Krill, coctail shrimp(uncooked) and squid! If that doesn't work...........check your water conditions. These fish are very sensitive and suseptable to bad water conditions. Prone to ick as well.

[JStorey]

Mine eats raw shrimp, squid, and clams on the half shell like a pig. I think would eat as long as I kept feeding him. He prefers to be hand fed (spoiled)

[HBtank]

Mine LOVED any kind of shrimp with a nice shell on it. Krill would be an easy choice.

[boxfishpooalot]

Well I tried Hikari Ocean Plankton, Hagen Marine flake, Hikari Mysid shrimp and so far he tried nothing. 3 days no food. This fish will die if he does not eat soon.

Should I try supermarket shrimp? The fish is only about 2 inches long.

[JokerGirl]

Try those supermarket cocktail shrimp (uncooked) and leave the shell on. Puffers have continuously growing teeth, much like rabbits, and need hard foods to munch on to wear them down. Probably at some point in its life you're going to have to lightly file down its teeth, but I think thats more of a problem with the fresh/brackish puffers.

Good luck getting your puffer to take flake/pellets. Try getting some JumboKrill by Tetra. They are fairly large and are freeze dried. Mine goes nuts for them.

[boxfishpooalot]

I tried a supermarket shrimp (tiger prawns) he looked at one I cut in half but did not bite it. Maybee put the whole thing in so it looks like a shrimp?

[nikon70]

ghost shrimp, mysis, frozen krill mine loves

[LittlePuff]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8727757#post8727757 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by boxfishpooalot
Well I tried Hikari Ocean Plankton, Hagen Marine flake, Hikari Mysid shrimp and so far he tried nothing. 3 days no food. This fish will die if he does not eat soon.

Should I try supermarket shrimp? The fish is only about 2 inches long.

He can go a week or so without food.

[henryjd]

wow...I wish I had that problem. Our puffer ate anything it wanted, all the time. I put a nice goby in the tank - slurp! I put krill, cocktail shrimp, clams, mussels, small pieces of raw fish (tuna, flounder), my finger...anything it would eat. We had to catch it and take it back to the LFS. It ate too many $30-40 fish and was getting huge (11" when we took it back to the pet store). Now catching it is another story - 20gal trash can in the tank!

[nano_angel]

mine went the first 2 weeks with0ut eating anything, then finally started eating s0me freeze dried krill i put in there. kn0w thats all he eats and i feed him by hand every m0rning. he eats ab0ut 12 pieces 0f it. he has gr0wn ab0ut 3 times his size in a c0uple m0nths n0w

[Chaloupa]

mine also eats a variety but I have a fair number of faster fish in the tank so I feed him seperately with forceps. Then I don't have to worry about my fingers, and he gets the food he needs...he see's me coming with the forceps and gets excited. He will eat almost any meaty treat from the local fish market. Good luck....mine will not eat any of the smaller frozen foods like Mysis, bloodworms etc etc only large chunks.

[boxfishpooalot]

Well so far the same, i think i saw him eat a mysid shrimp. Mostly he is eating only live food like amphipods found on the rocks. I think he ate some flake too, i dont know he hides alot.

[boxfishpooalot]

Okay, an update!

For anyone intersted, my lfs finally got some frozen Hikari krill in. He ate that and is doing great! I tried, flake, mysid shrimp,nori, supermarket shrimp,ect. Touched nothing but krill.

Also my dog faced puffer loves it :D

Krill