Pea Puffer Food recommendations?

[Princess_Winnifred]

I have a Pea Puffer and I am wondering about more food diversity for her. I have been mainly feeding her Frozen brine shrimp and frozen bloodworms. Frozen Brine Shrimp are her favorite. I have tried to give her snails but she does not seem to like or know what to do with them. Are there any other foods that I should try giving her? I have noticed she won't eat food once it touches the bottom of the tank so slow sinking food recommendations would be helpful!

Photo note: Here is a photo of my fish, I think she is very cute.

[SWilson]

So cute! I've heard these can be tricky to feed.  I've recently discovered that my amazon puffers love live mosquito larvae.  We happened to have them in a pond in our backyard that doesn't (yet) have any fish in it.  It totally grosses me out, but they love it.   

They also really liked live black worms, but after feeding them I noticed one of them had some kind of intestinal worm.  I tried to get them from California Black Worms (which is supposed to be the most reputable source) but they said they aren't producing on their farm right now b/c of drought.  They do have a slow sinking pellet made of black/red worms, which you can order on their ebay or amazon site, and while I haven't tried feeding them to my puffers, every other fish I have goes crazy for them.  

I have some freeze dried blackworms that I keep meaning to reconstitute in water and try, but haven't done that yet.  

For frozen, I've found that my puffers also like myssis shrimp (which you can also get spirulina gut-loaded) from Hikari.  They do not care for clams on a half shell or krill (but I've only tried freeze dried krill).   

[Lowells Fish Lab]

I'm having good luck with live baby brine shrimp and frozen bloodworms for my pea puffers. My experience so far has been that baby brine shrimp can build tiny fry into beautiful and healthy adult fish with few other foods ever offered. I can't say enough good things about BBS. You make a good point though. Over years there probably needs to be some diversity offered.

I'm currently working on getting my puffers onto hikari vibra bites by soaking them in blood worm juice before feeding. I'm getting some bites but I still have a lot of work to do.

The other avenue i'm pursuing relies on snails. I'm raising Malaysian trumpet snails in another tank. My thinking is that if I feed the snails exceptionally well, I might be able to pass that nutrition on to the puffers.

It sounds unusual for a pea puffer to be disinterested in snails. Are they too large maybe? I mostly feed very small ones. Somewhere around an eighth of an inch or so in diameter.

[aquachris]

As others have said, live blackworms, mosquito larvae and baby brine shrimp work great.  Mine will eat frozen bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp and frozen mysis shrimp.  

What is your tank setup?  Sounds like you have just the 1?  I have found they do extremely well in a 20 gallon long (or larger of course) in a group of 6 (and well planted) vs by themselves.  They tend to be more active/etc at around that number (I've experienced them both ways).

[Tom H]

You can always pre-crush the snails... May be too much for some but it works

[Princess_Winnifred]

Thank you for the suggestions. I do just have one pea puffer in a well planted 5 gallon. She is a little shy and skittish, but seems happy. The snails I have been feeding her are very small. I will try to work with her on snails more and think it will be interesting to try other foods.

[AJE]

Small snails, daphnia and worms of almost any kind always worked on mine.

[DShelton]

My pea puffers eat live BBS, some frozen blood worms, and microworms. Mine seem to be drawn to movement in the water. They will eat the frozen bloodworms, but they prefer live.

[AJE]

Yes, mine would also ever go after movement