What do you feed your pea puffers?

[KittenFishMom]

I decided to try some pea puffers. I put 4 young ones in a older, well seasoned, and well planted 15 gallon tank with lots of snail and 2 hillstream loaches that refuse to be caught. The hill stream loaches seem to be moving around more, but I haven't seen the pea puffers bother them. The loaches are 5 or 4 times the size of the pea puffers. The snails are disappearing, as would be expeceted. When I offer frozzen blood worms the puffers don't show mch interest. I also tryed vibra bites (sp? little twisty red food) I think the hill stream loaches aet both after dark.

What do you feed your pea puffers? do you think they would go for live bbs? I don't want to experiment too much becase there isn't much of a clean up crew. I am thining about adding a heater to my snail and trimmings bucket to speed up snail production.

Side note: I bought the 4 from a pet store. 1 is lager, the smaller 3 are about the same size. I don't know if they are different ages or if the big one is a female. They all had white bellies, so Ithnk they are too young to determin sex. They do seem to school a bit. They are fn to watch when they come out of the plants.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Mine get fed frozen bloodworms and snails. I haven’t taken the time to get them on Vibra bites 

[Colu]

They  predominantly eat live food pest snails black worms brine shrimp daphnia micro worms you can transition them on to frozen foods such as blood worms and brine shrimp it can be difficult to get them to take dry food like pellets or vibra bites I would recommend adding some vita-chem to there food to provide extra vitamins and minerals to there diet @KittenFishMom

Edited October 4, 2023 by Colu

[KittenFishMom]

Thank @Colu I'll start the shrimp hatcher this morning!  Do they eat older brine shrimp or scuds?

[Colu]

On 10/4/2023 at 3:19 PM, KittenFishMom said:

Thank @Colu I'll start the shrimp hatcher this morning!  Do they eat older brine shrimp or scuds?

They will eat scuds and older brine shrimp there's  less nutritional value in older brine shrimp 

[FLFishChik]

I purposely started 2 small “Snail Farm” tanks. 1 with bladder snails, the other with Ramshorn snails. I couldn’t get mine to eat frozen blood worm often. They loved smooshed snails though 

Edited October 4, 2023 by FLFishChik
Grammar

[KittenFishMom]

@FLFishChik I do have a small tank of bladder snails, and another of pink rams horn and a trim bcket with random snails. I just don't seem to be getting much production out of them. I add algae waffers and cuttle bone now and then. I think heaters might help. I want to find a nice balance so I have enough snails, but am not over run by them.

[FLFishChik]

On 10/4/2023 at 11:33 AM, KittenFishMom said:

@FLFishChik I do have a small tank of bladder snails, and another of pink rams horn and a trim bcket with random snails. I just don't seem to be getting much production out of them. I add algae waffers and cuttle bone now and then. I think heaters might help. I want to find a nice balance so I have enough snails, but am not over run by them.

If you have pea puffers, you won’t be over run with snails, lol. Each puffer can eat 4-5 small snail at a feeding. You might struggle to keep up. 
 

 I keep them in snail only tank and feed them really really well. I alternate Xtreme sinking wafers and Repashy Community plus daily. Their populations will explode if you feed them regularly and heavily 

[JettsPapa]

I have one of them in a 40 gallon breeder tank.  It will eat frozen bloodworms, but it took months before that happened.  I drop a few rams horn or bladder snails in the tank several times a week (I don't crush them, but for young fish you might need to).

[Odd Duck]

Mine never took any dry foods at all, not even freeze-dried Dapnia.  They refused wingless fruit flies looking at them in pure and obvious disbelief that I would offer such nasty things.  They would eat frozen bloodworms but not with enthusiasm.  Fry up to very small juvies will take microworms and vinegar eels, baby brine shrimp, but small scuds were a favorite.  The babies would take the tiniest fresh hatched scuds along with the microworms and vinegar eels.

Older juvies would take nearly anything that fit in their mouths for live food (except the fruit flies - sneering peas resulted).  Daphnia, Moina, scuds, whiteworms, and blackworms were favorites.  Bladder snails, ramshorns (proportionate to their size), bigger snails if crushed, and they relished a few mosquito larvae.  They would also take Grindal worms but usually a bit slower after the juvies reached subadult age where you could just barely start to tell them apart.  They seemed a bit put off by their tiny size, like, “How can we get full on such tiny worms, Mom?”

They really seem to like the hunt, so giving them fast moving, active live foods like Daphnia or scuds was always very exciting and got a very lively tank for a while.

[KittenFishMom]

My pea puffers seem to have full tummys. They are rather rouded, except for their tail. I have been feeding them mostly snails and some frozen bloodworms. I am trying to start up a daphnia colony, and am going to hatch brine shrimp. Do they need anything else in there diet? Can they over eat on live snails?

[KittenFishMom]

I rehomed my pea puffers after a while. They darkened to match the black sand and dark java moss and where hard to see, and hard to enjoy. They did like their snails and stayed fat on them. They would eat the frozen blood worms now and then, but I think they had a pretty good population of snails in that tank's java moss while I had the puffers.