My puffers teeth may be too long

[Gannon]

Hi!

I have a red eye red tail puffer.

I got him a bit over a year ago. Back then I was told he was like pea puffers and did not have teeth that needed shaving down.

however recently I’ve noticed he’s stopped eating bladder snails, many are just wandering around the tank now. Not too terribly long ago I couldn’t put them in and count on them surviving a minute.

he just eats bloodworms and occasionally other frozen foods now, and seems to have a little bit more trouble doing so.

additionally I feel like I can see his teeth much more prominently than I used to. 

knowing all this, is there anything I can do to help him? Is this a different problem entirely? 
 

Thanks for all the help you can offer with this!

[Tlindsey]

On 8/22/2024 at 7:08 PM, Gannon said:

Hi!

I have a red eye red tail puffer.

I got him a bit over a year ago. Back then I was told he was like pea puffers and did not have teeth that needed shaving down.

however recently I’ve noticed he’s stopped eating bladder snails, many are just wandering around the tank now. Not too terribly long ago I couldn’t put them in and count on them surviving a minute.

he just eats bloodworms and occasionally other frozen foods now, and seems to have a little bit more trouble doing so.

additionally I feel like I can see his teeth much more prominently than I used to. 

knowing all this, is there anything I can do to help him? Is this a different problem entirely? 
 

Thanks for all the help you can offer with this!

There some are puffer keepers that actually trim their puffer beak. @Gannon

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 6:21 PM, Tlindsey said:

There some are puffer keepers that actually trim their puffer beak. @Gannon

I’ve seen that! I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do that with an animal barely an inch long, with a very tiny mouth to boot

Edited August 22 by Gannon

[Tlindsey]

On 8/22/2024 at 7:22 PM, Gannon said:

I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that with an animal barely an inch long, with a very tiny mouth to boot

Yes can see that being a challenge. 

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 6:24 PM, Tlindsey said:

Yes can see that being a challenge. 

Especially worth noting I have very shaky hands, always have. I don’t have that delicate touch needed. Especially for a small fish

[Tlindsey]

On 8/22/2024 at 7:25 PM, Gannon said:

Especially worth noting I have very shaky hands, always have. I don’t have that delicate touch needed. Especially for a small fish

From what I've read some would sedate the puffer prior to trimming. That made me lose interest in keeping a puffer. 

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 6:28 PM, Tlindsey said:

From what I've read some would sedate the puffer prior to trimming. That made me lose interest in keeping a puffer. 

Yeah I saw that too. But that’s also why I saw these as a good choice as people on here and discord had told me they didn’t need trimming. Like pea puffers.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

I think I saw a @Zenzo video where he had to trim a beak. I think it’s one of those things that would be extremely nerve-wracking the first time you do it. But, once you’ve done it, it would be less scary. 
 

Some clove oil and some steady nerves and you’ll be fine!

Outside of that, I would be feeding all the snails I could. Maybe some Repashy with oyster shells or something in it to scrape the teeth on as they go for the Repashy. I would be doing everything I could to try and naturally trim the beak so that I wouldn’t have to do it myself with clove oil and a pair of “nippers” (as my girlfriend calls them for her manicures) 

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 6:41 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

I think I saw a @Zenzo video where he had to trim a beak. I think it’s one of those things that would be extremely nerve-wracking the first time you do it. But, once you’ve done it, it would be less scary. 
 

Some clove oil and some steady nerves and you’ll be fine!

Outside of that, I would be feeding all the snails I could. Maybe some Repashy with oyster shells or something in it to scrape the teeth on as they go for the Repashy. I would be doing everything I could to try and naturally trim the beak so that I wouldn’t have to do it myself with clove oil and a pair of “nippers” (as my girlfriend calls them for her manicures) 

This sounds like I’d totally be able to do it with a larger animal. But I must reiterate this thing is one inch long and its mouth is smaller than that would even suggest. I also just don’t have steady hands/nerves. It’s never been my thing unfortunately. I think a doctor called it resting tremors or something I don’t remember. 

But yeah I’ve dumped all the snails I can in there and after today I’ll fast him so he has to try to eat them. Praying that does the trick. But even when eating snails I never not once saw this puffer actually go through the shell. Goes for the meat just like pea puffers. 

[Tony s]

Needs professional help? @mountaintoppufferkeeper

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 7:55 PM, Tony s said:

Needs professional help? @mountaintoppufferkeeper

I reached out to someone who I ran into at a store who has kept these before. Is a stingray keeper and everything too I don’t imagine there is much he hasn’t seen or done, maybe he can give me a hand with this.

[Tony s]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:57 PM, Gannon said:

maybe he can give me a hand with this.

Got to explore every avenue  😁

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@Tony s Ive never had to trim a puffer beak/ dental plate personally but I do have my method that I would use below. @Gannonthe fist time would be the hardest but if I ever did need to do the trim I would follow Jonny's method here exactly:

 

Do you have a photo of the mouth? I have never had that issue with redeyes or any of the carinotetraodons.

 My preference is to not trim and avoid the stress if possible.  I like to feed trumpet snails to red eyes and not feed bloodworms if they decide to get picky. frozen tilapia strips are also a go to food here for all my puffer colonys. That might help the beak slightly. 

Edited August 23 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:43 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

@Tony s Ive never had to trim a puffer beak/ dental plate personally but I do have my method that I would use below. @Gannonthe fist time would be the hardest but if I ever did need to do the trim I would follow Jonny's method here exactly:

 

Do you have a photo of the mouth? I have never had that issue with redeyes or any of the carinotetraodons.

 My preference is to not trim and avoid the stress if possible.  I like to feed trumpet snails to red eyes and not feed bloodworms if they decide to get picky. frozen tilapia strips are also a go to food here for all my puffer colonys. That might help the beak slightly. 

I had a plastic feeding cone that he bites into all the time, surprised that didn’t do much. I’ll lay off bloodworms for a week and maybe he’ll try eating snails again.

and is there a reason you feed trumpet snails specifically?

 

On 8/22/2024 at 8:43 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

@Tony s Ive never had to trim a puffer beak/ dental plate personally but I do have my method that I would use below. @Gannonthe fist time would be the hardest but if I ever did need to do the trim I would follow Jonny's method here exactly:

 

Do you have a photo of the mouth? I have never had that issue with redeyes or any of the carinotetraodons.

 My preference is to not trim and avoid the stress if possible.  I like to feed trumpet snails to red eyes and not feed bloodworms if they decide to get picky. frozen tilapia strips are also a go to food here for all my puffer colonys. That might help the beak slightly. 

I had a plastic feeding cone that he bites into all the time, surprised that didn’t do much. I’ll lay off bloodworms for a week and maybe he’ll try eating snails again.

and is there a reason you feed trumpet snails specifically?

 

He’s really tiny, so this is the best I could get picture wise and it’s still pretty useless sorry

[Odd Duck]

There’s no protruding teeth in that picture.  If it’s current, it doesn’t look to me like the teeth need trimming.

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 9:29 PM, Odd Duck said:

There’s no protruding teeth in that picture.  If it’s current, it doesn’t look to me like the teeth need trimming.

It doesn’t show up in the picture but I can see teeth with the gap going down the whole way of the mouth. 
 

do they have to be coming out of the mouth to be overgrown?

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

On 8/22/2024 at 7:58 PM, Gannon said:

I had a plastic feeding cone that he bites into all the time, surprised that didn’t do much. I’ll lay off bloodworms for a week and maybe he’ll try eating snails again.

and is there a reason you feed trumpet snails specifically?

 

I had a plastic feeding cone that he bites into all the time, surprised that didn’t do much. I’ll lay off bloodworms for a week and maybe he’ll try eating snails again.

and is there a reason you feed trumpet snails specifically?

 

He’s really tiny, so this is the best I could get picture wise and it’s still pretty useless sorry

I feed all snails really..... but use trumpet snails often because those cone shaped snail shells seem to be harder and give a little more wear in my opinion. 

I only consider the teeth an issue if they grow so much that the puffer can not bite a snail etc.

In general you would see the teeth all the time when they overgrow ..... I have never seen that happen outside of amazon puffers (which I do not keep).  

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 9:55 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

I feed all snails really..... but use trumpet snails often because those cone shaped snail shells seem to be harder and give a little more wear in my opinion. 

I only consider the teeth an issue if they grow so much that the puffer can not bite a snail etc.

In general you would see the teeth all the time when they overgrow ..... I have never seen that happen outside of amazon puffers (which I do not keep).  

I’ll try to keep my eye out for that, but hopefully if he can chew up bloodworms he can chew up some smaller snails. His teeth are quite big and visible which I can’t remember being the case a while ago but you could be right.

 

I’ll give it some time to see if it’s just picky behavior leaving the snails alone. But I’ve never seen him not prefer snails to bloodworms.

 

thanks for the tip on snails!

 

[Odd Duck]

I have not kept this species but for most smaller species of puffer they are typically just barely visible unless the fish is biting into something.  That may be hard to tell in such a small fish.  I would consider  @mountaintoppufferkeeper to be our resident expert as he has kept and successfully bred multiple puffer species.  Unless you see the teeth protruding when the fish is not eating, I would try feeding some of the harder shelled snails (like MTS, or what I’ve been told are Australian mud snails - Potampyrgus antipodarum if you can find them) to make sure to minimize the risk of tooth overgrowth.  Adding these harder shelled species will likely correct any issue as long as it hasn’t gotten too severe yet.  Be careful with your choices since these species are both considered invasive.  I’m not convinced the mud snails are what I have since mine don’t have an operculum and the mud snails do, but I don’t have a better name for you.  They have a noticeably much harder shell than ramshorns or bladder snails, not quite as hard as an MTS shell.

The suspected mud snails I have randomly showed up in a friend’s tank and he gave some to me thinking they were Prambanians (Thiara winteri).  They definitely aren’t Prambanians since they never get the size or shell texture of those and visibly are a match for the mud snails, but they do a good job working sand substrate for me without excessive overpopulation like MTS can do.  I barely see them in tanks that have fish (even tiny fish that don’t pester snails) and I have to poke around in the substrate a bit for some of them if I want to spread them to another tank.  You can see some in this pic of my 3 G that I just redid in prep for restarting some shrimp in here.

 

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 9:59 PM, Odd Duck said:

I have not kept this species but for most smaller species of puffer they are typically just barely visible unless the fish is biting into something.  That may be hard to tell in such a small fish.  I would consider  @mountaintoppufferkeeper to be our resident expert as he has kept and successfully bred multiple puffer species.  Unless you see the teeth protruding when the fish is not eating, I would try feeding some of the harder shelled snails (like MTS, or what I’ve been told are Australian mud snails - Potampyrgus antipodarum if you can find them) to make sure to minimize the risk of tooth overgrowth.  Adding these harder shelled species will likely correct any issue as long as it hasn’t gotten too severe yet.  Be careful with your choices since these species are both considered invasive.  I’m not convinced the mud snails are what I have since mine don’t have an operculum and the mud snails do, but I don’t have a better name for you.  They have a noticeably much harder shell than ramshorns or bladder snails, not quite as hard as an MTS shell.

The suspected mud snails I have randomly showed up in a friend’s tank and he gave some to me thinking they were Prambanians (Thiara winteri).  They definitely aren’t Prambanians since they never get the size or shell texture of those and visibly are a match for the mud snails, but they do a good job working sand substrate for me without excessive overpopulation like MTS can do.  I barely see them in tanks that have fish (even tiny fish that don’t pester snails) and I have to poke around in the substrate a bit for some of them if I want to spread them to another tank.  You can see some in this pic of my 3 G that I just redid in prep for restarting some shrimp in here.

 

Well i can very clearly see the teeth in his mouth. So that would suggest they’re overgrown according to this post right? Maybe im misunderstanding.

Also I’ll certainly try those snails once I see any evidence he’s eating bladder snails again at least.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I kept RERT irrubesco puffers for awhile 3 years I’d had that group and had a breeding project that I unfortunately lost a year almost 2 ago. There’s a thread on here with that journal 
 

They don’t have teeth like Amazons, Mbu, Fahaka or other “toothed” puffers like the dearly departed Murphy. They have cartilage ridges inside the mouth that break up food. They often kind of suck their food in and then sometime regurgitate the food to grind it up then ingest it again. 
 

With snails they usually suck the snail out of the shell - baby bladder or pond snails they can crunch through and adults when they’re around 2-3” or so can crush a ramshorn if they want to but they’re usually too lazy and just suck the contents out. You need to watch this as you can get ammonia spikes from half slurped escargot. 
 

They can be picky about food and if you don’t introduce lots of foods early and get them eating 3-5 things early you can get stuck with them eating a few things long term. Soaking things in blood worm juice and feeding it with blood worms to give it a positive association with their favorite food can help. I did that with tubifex. Mine ate live snails, scuds, baby brine, mosquito larvae, black worms when available, frozen tubifex and blood worms and I’d sneak in some Vibra bites and they’d eat 2-3 before figuring out it wasn’t a blood worm. 
 

They’re a great puffer. Have fun!

[Odd Duck]

Good info @Beardedbillygoat1975.  I’d forgotten that you had a group going.

Edited August 23 by Odd Duck

[Gannon]

On 8/22/2024 at 11:12 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

I kept RERT irrubesco puffers for awhile 3 years I’d had that group and had a breeding project that I unfortunately lost a year almost 2 ago. There’s a thread on here with that journal 
 

They don’t have teeth like Amazons, Mbu, Fahaka or other “toothed” puffers like the dearly departed Murphy. They have cartilage ridges inside the mouth that break up food. They often kind of suck their food in and then sometime regurgitate the food to grind it up then ingest it again. 
 

With snails they usually suck the snail out of the shell - baby bladder or pond snails they can crunch through and adults when they’re around 2-3” or so can crush a ramshorn if they want to but they’re usually too lazy and just suck the contents out. You need to watch this as you can get ammonia spikes from half slurped escargot. 
 

They can be picky about food and if you don’t introduce lots of foods early and get them eating 3-5 things early you can get stuck with them eating a few things long term. Soaking things in blood worm juice and feeding it with blood worms to give it a positive association with their favorite food can help. I did that with tubifex. Mine ate live snails, scuds, baby brine, mosquito larvae, black worms when available, frozen tubifex and blood worms and I’d sneak in some Vibra bites and they’d eat 2-3 before figuring out it wasn’t a blood worm. 
 

They’re a great puffer. Have fun!

Yeah the stuff about their teeth you described here is what I’ve always heard. I’ll give this some time and hopefully he is just being picky!

[MAC]

I've had my "Red eye Red tail' irrubesco puffers for 4 years now and they were pretty close to full grown size when I got them so no telling how old they are. 

I had also heard they didn't have the teeth issues common with other puffers. Still, I tried to introduce a variety of foods, but in my experience they never really showed much interest in eating live snails and even live with a colony of 'wild type' neocaridina.

A few month or so ago I noticed the female puffer was not eating aggressively as usual. Looking closer I thought I could see her "teeth" filling most of her mouth area. After time she was unable to eat at all, trying to slurp in mosquito larva, nothing made it into her mouth. 

Now I could see that teeth, or beak, or cartilage, or whatever it is, was blocking her whole mouth. 

I concluded a tooth trim was required. And I was very nervous to attempt it. I watched and read as much as I could about the procedure and eventually followed the directions from dansfish. 

I can attest from first hand experience these fish can need their teeth trimmed. I trimmed a little from the top and bottom, with the bottom 'tooth' being much larger than the top. 

I've included a screenshot from a video I took awhile back that is the best reference I have for what I began noticing with the overgrowth of tooth. 

Best of luck with your puffers.  

Edit: forgot to mention, after trimming the teeth the puffer has been able to eat normally again and shows no ill effects. 

 

Edited August 23 by MAC

[Gannon]

On 8/23/2024 at 1:30 PM, MAC said:

I've had my "Red eye Red tail' irrubesco puffers for 4 years now and they were pretty close to full grown size when I got them so no telling how old they are. 

I had also heard they didn't have the teeth issues common with other puffers. Still, I tried to introduce a variety of foods, but in my experience they never really showed much interest in eating live snails and even live with a colony of 'wild type' neocaridina.

A few month or so ago I noticed the female puffer was not eating aggressively as usual. Looking closer I thought I could see her "teeth" filling most of her mouth area. After time she was unable to eat at all, trying to slurp in mosquito larva, nothing made it into her mouth. 

Now I could see that teeth, or beak, or cartilage, or whatever it is, was blocking her whole mouth. 

I concluded a tooth trim was required. And I was very nervous to attempt it. I watched and read as much as I could about the procedure and eventually followed the directions from dansfish. 

I can attest from first hand experience these fish can need their teeth trimmed. I trimmed a little from the top and bottom, with the bottom 'tooth' being much larger than the top. 

I've included a screenshot from a video I took awhile back that is the best reference I have for what I began noticing with the overgrowth of tooth. 

Best of luck with your puffers.  

Edit: forgot to mention, after trimming the teeth the puffer has been able to eat normally again and shows no ill effects. 

 

Thank you so much for this I felt like I’m going crazy.

 

but I really don’t know how I can do this with such a small animal and my contact didn’t think he could do it either. So I’m at a loss.