I have had a figure 8 puffer for about a month now, and all he will eat is live ghost shrimp, feeder guppies, and frozen krill. I have tried everything else; daphnia, brine shrimp, blood worms, etc. Nothing works! he just turns his nose! Its so frustrating because not only are his favourite foods more expensive and more difficult to keep around, but I want to make sure he has a varied diet, but he does not agree with that! Does anyone know of anything else I can feed him, or any way I can make other foods more enticing to him? Thanks so much!
Oh, and I forgot, he also OCCASIONALLY will eat live snails.
If I breed guppies for him, should I breed fancy guppies or feeder guppies? (he enjoys both very much lol )
one thing that worked for me when I have a picky eater is get some sort of food that would stick to a another item. e.g. dried worm in cube form. hook it up to a toothpick or to a long piece of thread. dangle the thread or toothpick in water and entice the puffer into thinking this is live food.
the concept is the same as fishing you know. you use lures to intice the fish. you just need to come up with some innovative idea to make the fish think that you are feeding it is live.
you can even start by skewering ghost shrimp or the feeder guppy to a toothpick (a little gruesome, yeah.) and then eventually move to some common type of fish food.
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well for the time being breed guppies(easiest in the world just put a male and 5 females together and you will have more then 100 in a month.) so you could feed those with something and slowly make him eat other things. like you could give him 2 guppies and a bloodworm. see if he eats the blood worm within a week if so give him 2 guppies and 2 blood worms then 1 guppy and 3 blood worms then 4 blood worms per week. if not do the same thing but with something else
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Have you given hard boiled egg a try? Mine was picky and he loved it so much! more than the shrimp amazingly also try clam and oysters they like those too and you can get them from the food stores. Green beans and grapes are something good to add too.
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When there young this can be normal but as they get older they can be satisfied with dead foods.
You may have to play a tuff game with him as hunger should win out of a picky eater syndrome eventually.
Bio-pure (hikari) make a super high quality vitamin enriched blood worm you may try to ween him on.
get the cubes not the wafer.
These worms have a really strong scent because of there quality that he may go for.
You can try putting one or few whole worms once you’ve thawed them in a glass (dollar store plastic shot glasses) on a tooth pick and run them across the top to make them look lively. He may enjoy the chase.
You can try alternating feedings. one day the guppies next feeding the bloodworms, but him only eating live foods when young is not uncommon.
Good Luck!!!!
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try shrimp, an feed it to him off of a stick…but do NOT an i repeat DO NOT!! feed him guppies, I learned the hard way. you do not feed a salt water fish fresh water fish, they are too nasty an carry too many paracites (sp) which in the end will kill him, so dont worry about the guppies, get some shrimp, an poke it on a stick an put it in his face an he should want to eat it….thats how we had to feed our puffer!! GOOD LUCK!!
23 years in the aqua hobby
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