Need A Little Info

[pat3612]

Hi I ordered a pair of dp and they were not supposed be delivered till March they came early about a week or so ago anyway had a tank cycled but I had to rush out and get plants sand etc. I lost the little male but female is doing fine. Should I just leave be or do you think I should get a male. Also I plan to get a 50 or 75 gal aquarium 75 if I can get it pass the hubby I would like to put a school of south american puffers in as someone advised me on here and I think that would be cool put Ive read that you have to trim their teeth. I cant see trimming 6 or 8 puffers teeth all the time so is this true . Thanks Pat

 

[Mr._Fishy]

If your tank is cycled and the one is fine, I don't see any problem with getting another puff. Given your tank is big enough of course.

Sap's will most likely need their teeth trimmed. Neal Monks' (known here as nmonks) south american puffers never need trimming. He has them housed in a tank with silica sand substrate and mts as food. Many people will say that mts are too hard and damage a puffers teeth, but in the wild, the have to eat food hard and abrasive enough to stop their teeth from overgrowing. There is nobody there to cut their teeth for them. But it really isn't that hard to trim their teeth after they are knocked out with clove oil. It can be nerve racking the first time, but after that it isn't so hard.

Ryan

 

[pat3612]

If your tank is cycled and the one is fine, I don't see any problem with getting another puff. Given your tank is big enough of course.

Sap's will most likely need their teeth trimmed. Neal Monks' (known here as nmonks) south american puffers never need trimming. He has them housed in a tank with silica sand substrate and mts as food. Many people will say that mts are too hard and damage a puffers teeth, but in the wild, the have to eat food hard and abrasive enough to stop their teeth from overgrowing. There is nobody there to cut their teeth for them. But it really isn't that hard to trim their teeth after they are knocked out with clove oil. It can be nerve racking the first time, but after that it isn't so hard.

Ryan

Thanks my tank is a10 gal with my little puffer in it and thanks I emailed Neal just to check. How long can you keep a fish out of water, and how do you protect their slime coat. Sorry if these questions seem dum. My husband and I were big bass fisherman at one time. Catch and release but we never touched their coat. Thanks Pat

 

[nmonks]

Not much to add to Ryan's comments above. Yes, it does seem to me that the combination of silica sand and Melanoides snails does reduce the need to trim the teeth on Colomesus puffers. Put another way, when I replaced the sand with gravel, I found their teeth growing much more rapidly! I've now returned to keeping them in a tank with sand and snails.

I'm not sure this approach would remove the need to trim their teeth permanently. Not kept them for a full lifespan yet, so no data. But as Ryan has said, there's no big deal to trimming teeth. Clove oil sedates the fish very quickly and safely, and using cuticle clippers it is literally a few seconds' work to do the actual trimming. Once returned to the aquarium they regain normal behaviour in a few minutes.

If you want to avoid teeth trimming as much as possible, keep them in a pufferfish-only aquarium. This way you can feed them exclusively hard foods like unshelled shrimp, snails, krill and so on. Unshelled shrimp are great, because you can hand-feed the puffers the eyeballs and legs and they will crack away at these food item, wearing down their teeth in the process. But SAPs prefer softer food (they love bloodworms) and if you keep them in a mixed species environment they will often fill up on those foods instead of the crunchy stuff. So if possible, keep in a single-species (or at least pufferfish-only) aquarium.

SAPs are by far the hardiest pufferfish in the hobby. I highly recommend them.

Cheers, Neale

 

[pat3612]

Thanks everyone for all the info.