DP not eating

[Discomafia]

As the title reads, my dwarf puffer that I bought a couple of weeks ago hasn't eaten a single thing yet. I'm only now beginning to get worried, as I know that they can go 2 weeks without eating with no problem. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have tried feeding her frozen bloodworms, frozen brine shrimp, shrimp, gammarus, freeze dried tubifex worms and live feeder shrimp (no surprise at not getting eaten there, they're mostly her size , never mind, my newt seems to like em' )

She only took a small nibble or two out of the bloodworms, and I alternate between feeding bloodworms and brine shrimp every 2 days, but to no avail. The rest, she doesn't even register as being food. She is looking thin, but not that much of a size difference when I first got her. I've seen her nibble on some beard algae as well on many occasions, but I know that DP's don't eat algae!

So what should I do now? I wanted to get some live blackworms, and I'm sure the rest of my fish and the newt especially would like that too, but they're hard to find around here... What about baby brine shrimp or daphnia? What about food that I have around the house?

I know puffers eat cockles and mussels, but I don't think she'd go for it because she's so small... ) What about frozen fish? I have some trout, but I assume that's too fatty for feeding to fish, am I right? I did see some snails in the tank, but that's just 4 or 5 the most. Did see a couple of empty shells, so that's what I hope is sustaining her...

I'm prolly going to pop over to the lfs tomorrow as my shipment of riccia has arrived, so I will try to get something then. What do you all recommend?

Any advice much appreciated.

 

[jflowers]

Sounds like you are feeding the right things to me. Can you get live brine shrimp and bloodworm? I would try that if you can, or try to get the frozen to move in the current so it thinks its live food. You may just have a picky one.

Jon

 

[Discomafia]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will see what I can do. What other food do you you guys suggest?

 

[OoHeatheroO]

get some pond snails!!! They LOVE those. Its so cute to watch them hunt. My dp will take on snails even bigger then he is. Go to your lfs or petsmart and ask them for small snails..usually petsmart has lots of baby snails because they cant get rid of them, they should give you them for free

 

[Discomafia]

how big are pond snails? I used to have a mystery snail in my tank, but now it's in my newt tank. The DP didn't even give him a second glance when he was in the tank, so I moved him (he was eating some of the plants too )

OK, I will defn. look for some tomorrow.

Thanks!



edit - no problem paying for them, the dude at my lfs and I are good chums, I'll prolly just get it off him for free. Hoping they have them, that is...

 

[OoHeatheroO]

how big are pond snails? I used to have a mystery snail in my tank, but now it's in my newt tank. The DP didn't even give him a second glance when he was in the tank, so I moved him (he was eating some of the plants too )

OK, I will defn. look for some tomorrow.

Thanks!



edit - no problem paying for them, the dude at my lfs and I are good chums, I'll prolly just get it off him for free. Hoping they have them, that is...

black mystery snails' shells are too hard for the puffer and might injure himself tryin to break through their shell. Pond snails are usually just sort of brown/clear colored on the shells and they are small. I dont think they get any larger then the size of a nickel. Usually the lfs's have lots of them because they come in on shipments of plants and what not and cant get rid of them.

Good luck to you!

 

[Discomafia]

I see, thanks for that info about the mystery snail's shells.

The ones I have in my tank are quite small, and came along with some plants, didn't mind because I knew I would be getting a DP soon... The thing is I see only so few, and they're really small. Around a diameter of 0.25"? Never seen her eat one though.

 

[stellablu]

My DP's eat anything, but like they said above give live brine shrimp or live bloodworms (blackworms) a try...those little guys LOOOOOOOVE that!

If you go to your LFS or even Wal-Mart's fish department and ask for the nuisance snails they'll happily scrape the little buggers off the tank walls for you. Don't look so much in the actual snail tanks, look in the fish tanks that have a gazillion tiny snails scaling the tank wall. Sometimes when they scoop them up you get some tiny live krill too, and my DP's love the occasional treat of grabbing those.

If you put them in a jar with an air stone (drop in a small weekend feeder block) you should get those snails to drop eggs really soon after. I only said breed your own because the rule of thumb with puffers is to feed them snails the size of their eye and smaller because otherwise they'll simply suck the snail out of the shell or nip at it...which in your case wouldn't be that bad because at least he'd be eating. That shell is very important for them to keep their teeth grinded down.

Are your parameters fine? I've noticed that even during a nasty nitrite spike my DP's still ate and acted completely normal, but yours may be sensitive to too high of levels or low temp.

Hopefully once you get him eating on live food you can wean him onto frozen!

As for cockles and mussels you could try to mince them in small amounts. I have several sizes of puffers so I mince, chop and slice different sizes of mussels.

Best of luck and let us know if/what he eats!!!

 

[jflowers]

I keep 11 adult (my puffers don't even look at them at this size) apple snails with my puffers and as they breed they lay eggs out of the water. When the eggs hatch the puffers love it, lots of bite size snails heading into the water . My new addition, a Figure 8, in a brackish tank may be a different story as I will have to collect snails from my other tank for it. Rambling, sorry, meant to say I agree with stellablu about going to your lfs and getting some tiny snails. I can sometimes hear the crunching

Jon

 

[Dwarfs]

Try turning the temp up a few degrees as well, doing this usually makes a fish hungry

 

[TorPeteO]

I'm having the same problem. Did you get yours at the Wal-Mart in South Keys like you said? I got a couple there. They've really only eaten snails so far. They've tried frozen blood worms, didn't even look twice at frozen mysis shrimp. I'm also having a hard time finding ANY live food around here.

I'm trying to grow out some brine shrimp, maybe they'll give those a shot. I bought a pack and just dumped it into a margarine container...hopefully they'll get large enough for the puffers to notice them within a relatively short time. It's not expensive, so you might want to give it a shot, too.

The Big Al's in Kanata had no feeder shrimp, or anything that would work, really. You could ask for snails, although it's probably easier for you to ask at the closer stores.

Good luck with your little guy,
Peter

 

[stellablu]

jflowers My boyfriend and I were having a chat about hearing my puffers eat their snails...he didn't believe me. haha kind of cool, innit?

 

[Discomafia]

Thanks for all the replies guys!

Been kinda busy all day so had no time to get online. I found in the classified ads a 33 gall. w/ hood and Aqua-Glo tube, stand, Penguin 170, an Elite 802 pump, loads of gravel, some air line tubing, a full bottle of Tetra Colour Bits, and a few pieces of slate all for the amazing price of $150.

Pretty good deal if I may say so myself. Best part is the Penguin 170 is already cycled, but I won't be adding anything too soon. Going to be doing tests for 2 weeks at least to make sure all is good, and also add some substrate from my current tank. Also the time will give me some time to plan what I want to do with this tank... Was thinking of brackish Fig 8 tank, or get a pair of sevs... So many ideas floating around, I can see it's going to be fun filling this tank out.

Been busy moving the thing and cleaning it for most of the day, taking a break now... I didn't get a chance to get to the lfs, but I will definitely do it tomorrow. Either that or pop down to the local Walmart and get some snails from them. Just hope they don't destroy my plants.

So now I know, just get some snails, and see what happens huh... Like TorPeteO mentioned, we're having a hard time finding live food here in Ottawa atm, so I guess it'll just have to be snails for now.

Someone mentioned raising the temp, I will try that later. Test results same as normal, Ammonia - 0, Nitrite - 0, Nitrate - 10... But I will check again in a while and post back the results, because I didn't do any tests for some time now... I've read that DP's need a temp of 80F, is that true? The tank is up about 78F, I will raise the temp and post some results...

And TorPeteO, I did get her at the South Keys Walmart. The feeder shrimp I have now are the ones I bought a few weeks ago at Big Al's East, and those were the last ones there too...