Pea puffer and Worm Nutritional Value comparison in general

[Lennie]

I have been considering pea puffers for ages but I always make myself not get them. My friend got a pretty good looking stock with nice bellies and all. 

I have two empty tanks for quarantine and one planted 125Liter tank for later on. So I may get a group of 10 or so.

 

The question is about feeding. I saw many times live food being the only option here. I have daphnia, white worms and I hatch artemia daily. Would these three be enough? I also have mini ramshorns, bladder snails and pond snails in my guppy tanks. I can feed live bbs daily and support their dirt with extra food of other choices as second meal.

I see grindal worms, white worms, bloodworms, blackworms, earthworms listed. Now the question is, what is the nutritional value difference between all of these? We may include tubifex too I guess?

Like, as I have white worm cultures, is obtaining a grindal worm culture make any sense to add one extra food to their diet and spend money on? How different is white worms compared to grindal worms? @Guppysnail
 

Also I am out of praziquantel. Would levamisole be good alone to deworm them potentially. They look pretty good but yknow, just in case? @Odd Duck @Colu

I even want to breed them. I love the challenge

[Colu]

On 12/24/2023 at 11:22 PM, Lennie said:

I have been considering pea puffers for ages but I always make myself not get them. My friend got a pretty good looking stock with nice bellies and all. 

I have two empty tanks for quarantine and one planted 125Liter tank for later on. So I may get a group of 10 or so.

 

The question is about feeding. I saw many times live food being the only option here. I have daphnia, white worms and I hatch artemia daily. Would these three be enough? I also have mini ramshorns, bladder snails and pond snails in my guppy tanks. I can feed live bbs daily and support their dirt with extra food of other choices as second meal.

I see grindal worms, white worms, bloodworms, blackworms, earthworms listed. Now the question is, what is the nutritional value difference between all of these? We may include tubifex too I guess?

Like, as I have white worm cultures, is obtaining a grindal worm culture make any sense to add one extra food to their diet and spend money on? How different is white worms compared to grindal worms? @Guppysnail
 

Also I am out of praziquantel. Would levamisole be good alone to deworm them potentially. They look pretty good but yknow, just in case? @Odd Duck @Colu

I even want to breed them. I love the challenge

Praziquantel treats different types of parasite such as tape worms flukes and flat worms levamisole treat nematode worms nodular worms roundworms and hook worms  I would recommend using both praziquantel and levamisole on puffer what you could do is use levamisole and monitor hopefully you wouldn't have any issues I would make sure you have your own  healthy cultures of  live food that will make it  less likely to give you issues with parasite in the future 

Edited December 25, 2023 by Colu

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I’m a bad Pea Puffer owner in that mine get frozen bloodworms, ramshorn snails, and bladder snails. I don’t do the most, but I’ve had them for years and they look awesome. 
 

I’d say go for it if you want them! If you already have other worm cultures you have more options than I do, and mine have done great for me for about 2 years. 

Edited December 25, 2023 by AllFishNoBrakes

[Guppysnail]

I would add grindal worms and snails.  I don’t know the nutritional value.  I’ve always heard they are like sausage casings and nutritional value depends on what you feed them. Like gut loading insects to feed reptiles.  
Tubifex eats detritus bloodworms eat sewage and garbage white worms nutritional yeast yogurt and bread and grindle dog/cat kibble. 

[Lennie]

On 12/25/2023 at 2:59 AM, Colu said:

Praziquantel treats different types of parasite such as tape worms flukes and flat worms levamisole treat nematode worms nodular worms roundworms and hook worms  I would recommend using both praziquantel and levamisole on puffer what you could do is use levamisole and monitor hopefully you wouldn't have any issues I would make sure you have your own  healthy cultures of  live food that will make it  less likely to give you issues with parasite in the future 

My friend said they are tankbred. They look plumb and nice. He said you dont even need to deworm but I still might just in case

[Odd Duck]

If the breeding stock was dewormed thoroughly before breeding then the risk is lower for intestinal parasites but far from zero for species that mostly eat live prey.  I would caution you that adult pea puffers aren’t reliable about eating baby brine.  Honestly, they aren’t across the board reliable about eating any one prey item.  Snails, especially bladder and ramshorns, are a favorite.  So that with a reliable source for Daphnia and whiteworms and you’re likely OK.  If you can also culture scuds, those are as consistently accepted as Daphnia, blackworms, and whiteworms.

If you want to breed, you’ll want Grindals, too, for babies, plus at least one species of tiny worms - vinegar eels, microworms, banana worms, Walter worms.  Babies will usually accept baby brine shrimp.  Adults will eat Grindals, too, but prefer bigger worms.  I’ve not tried earthworms with mine.  Unless you want to try to pick out tiny, young earthworms, I don’t know if pea puffers will take them.  I think adults earthworms will be too big, but I’ve seen pea puffers take bites out of the foot or antennae of adult mystery snails.  🤷🏻‍♀️  The risk would be if the pea puffer killed the earthworm without eating most of it.  That would have to be closely supervised to remove uneaten bits.

[Lennie]

On 12/27/2023 at 8:10 PM, Odd Duck said:

If the breeding stock was dewormed thoroughly before breeding then the risk is lower for intestinal parasites but far from zero for species that mostly eat live prey.  I would caution you that adult pea puffers aren’t reliable about eating baby brine.  Honestly, they aren’t across the board reliable about eating any one prey item.  Snails, especially bladder and ramshorns, are a favorite.  So that with a reliable source for Daphnia and whiteworms and you’re likely OK.  If you can also culture scuds, those are as consistently accepted as Daphnia, blackworms, and whiteworms.

If you want to breed, you’ll want Grindals, too, for babies, plus at least one species of tiny worms - vinegar eels, microworms, banana worms, Walter worms.  Babies will usually accept baby brine shrimp.  Adults will eat Grindals, too, but prefer bigger worms.  I’ve not tried earthworms with mine.  Unless you want to try to pick out tiny, young earthworms, I don’t know if pea puffers will take them.  I think adults earthworms will be too big, but I’ve seen pea puffers take bites out of the foot or antennae of adult mystery snails.  🤷🏻‍♀️  The risk would be if the pea puffer killed the earthworm without eating most of it.  That would have to be closely supervised to remove uneaten bits.

They look very nice and plump. But very tiny. They are actual babies!  I meant to keep them in a quarantine, but it turned out to be a grow out tank at the same time. 

 

They eat live bbs now, I feed them twice a day. I gotta find grindals as they are nothing in the size of eating even adult daphnia yet. They are sooo small!! They ate baby daphnias. I have vinegar eels on hand from those youve listed. I have never seen scuds here to be fair, maybe it is me.

Since they are very tiny, I added a couple mini ramshorns to their tank, but they dont seem to pay attention to them. I bet it will change once they grow. I also have many bladder snails and pond snails. Should I try? Majority of my pest snails are in the guppy tanks. Is there anything I can do to have a sterile culture of pest snails? Maybe like starting a new walstad tank with snails so they can reproduce there? How long would it take to have a new snail only tank to eventually go potential parasite/disease free if there is any?

Edited December 27, 2023 by Lennie

[Odd Duck]

If your pea puffers are that small, then you can add adult bladder and ramshorn snails to the tank now and they should be making young snails that are ready when the tiny murder beans are ready.  It would be really nice if you could find scud cultures since they reproduce very fast and baby scuds were THE favorite meal of my baby pea puffers.  Pic shows a freshly nabbed baby scud going down the hatch of the young pea puffer.  I tried to make scud “refugiums” using plastic boxes filled with leaves and with plastic craft mesh inserts in the lids so the scuds had someplace to reproduce where pea puffers couldn’t get to them.  The idea being they would serve as an ongoing, self-renewing source of live food.

The boxes didn’t work.  They might work if the entire box was made from craft mesh but the lid with a mesh insert didn’t work.  The boxes might also have been too small or not a rich enough food source inside for the scuds to keep enough of the juveniles or adults inside to make the next generation, I’m not sure.

[PotatoFish]

I posted about this in the "picture" forum because I was curious about the nutritional needs of a pea puffer I got for my classroom. I have also had a lot of success with Vibra Bites. The trick I found is that you need to feed them slowly and drop them where the puffer fish is hovering. Once the Vibra Bite hits the gravel Puffy the Pufferfish loses all interest.

Other food:
I also drop in baby marsh snails. She seems to leave the adult grass/glass/ghost shrimp alone, and they do a great job of cleaning up Vibra Bites that hit the bottom of the tank.

[Odd Duck]

Just a heads up, I’ve had a few dozen pea puffers by now with the multiple attempts to integrate Bad Pea Daddy into a shoal and then raising a dozen or so babies (not from Bad Daddy).  Not a single one was ever the slightest bit interested in Vibra Bites.  I think you have to pretty much starve them to force them to eat anything other than live or frozen, meaty foods.  Mine will eat all types of live foods off the bottom of the tank, but wouldn’t even take live fruit flies as they were floating or after they were sinking down and drowning.  They truly need live foods and Vibra Bites are definitely not that.

[PotatoFish]

On 12/28/2023 at 10:27 PM, Odd Duck said:

Just a heads up, I’ve had a few dozen pea puffers by now with the multiple attempts to integrate Bad Pea Daddy into a shoal and then raising a dozen or so babies (not from Bad Daddy).  Not a single one was ever the slightest bit interested in Vibra Bites.  I think you have to pretty much starve them to force them to eat anything other than live or frozen, meaty foods.  Mine will eat all types of live foods off the bottom of the tank, but wouldn’t even take live fruit flies as they were floating or after they were sinking down and drowning.  They truly need live foods and Vibra Bites are definitely not that.

Odd Duck points out something I left out. the Vibra Bites don't work with all pea puffers. She wasn't emaciated when she started eating them, and I had baby marsh snails on "standby" in case she didn't take to Vibra Bites. 

I don't have a sample size large enough to give you an accurate idea of how often it works, but live foods are an easy win to get them to eat. I just have the one fish that gobbles Vibra Bites up as that food wasn't available when I kept my other pea puffers in college. 

The frozen baby brine shrimp order arrived a few days ago, and Puffy the Pea Puffer has devoured them also.