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About Chris Robbins
Expertise
I have 25+ years of personal experience as a pet
store employee and manager in the family pet store
business. The main part of our business was
Freshwater Fish. I can answer questions on; Fish care, diseases,
parasites and fish identification, feeding your
fish, breeding and sexing your fish, setting up
your aquarium, cleaning your aquarium, and
"what`s this weird stuff in my tank/on my
fish" questions. I am not an African Cichlid expert, Plant expert or Brackish Expert. No Pond or Saltwater Questions Please.
Experience
I worked in and managed my family's fish and pet and fish store for 26 years and maintained the 35 aquariums. My experience also has included occasional in-home consultation and aquarium maintenance for my clients.
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You are here: Experts > Animals/Pets > Pet Fish > Fish > Pignose Puffer Problems!
Expert: Chris Robbins
Date: 3/13/2008
Subject: Pignose Puffer Problems!
Question
Hi Chris,
I recently purchased a Pignose Puffer (aka. Arrowhead Puffer/ Tetradon Suvatti). He is housed in a large Aquarium with a sandy substrate, plenty of hiding areas, double filtration, efficient heating and all relevant water parameters are pretty much perfect.
However
He's not eating. I've known Puffers through my work that refuse to eat but I've never actually discovered why. I've tried him on dead food (he was fed dead mussels in the FS) but he's just not interested.
I'm not sure if he's unwell or not. His fins bear the scars of territorial aggression. Perhaps from the wild, perhaps from the less that impressive surroundings that was his FS holding tank.
My fiancee and eye were observing him earlier today when he displayed behaviour which I identified as hunger. However when I added food to the tank he showed no interest and returned to his usual resting place. His teeth seem a little worn down so someone has obviously been over-zealous on the old shelled cockles etc.
I don't really want to start on feeder fish as I'm unsure of the ethics and the disease risks.
He's seems perfectly healthy aside from his uninterest in food. As you know Pignoses are really unactive fish when food is not present. So keeping one that won't eat is becoming nothing less than boring.
Hope you can help!!
Tom
Answer
Hi Tom;
If the tank is fairly new you might want to check the ammonia and nitrites just to be sure they are "zero". New Tank Syndrome can be very harsh. Make a 25% water change if either are elevated. Puffers are very sensitive to these toxins.
Keep offering the mussels if that's what he was used to. It's okay that his beak is very minimal. I'm sure he's still got quite a bite even with a short one. (Yikes!) If his beak grows too much you would have to trim it with nail clippers. Not fun, but some do need it.
I'm not a fan of feeding live animals of any kind to anything unless it is absolutely necessary to feed the predator until I can coax them into a different food. There are several reasons, the main one is the cruelty issue. Just a 'feeder fish' yes, but a live animal nonetheless. When I kept reptiles I used to only feed prey that was humanely pre-killed in a CO2 chamber. We kept them frozen and thawed them before feeding. You might try dangling a piece of mussel or shrimp from a string or a stick to simulate live prey. It used to work for me with other predator animals and fish that needed to be encouraged to eat. Even some of our most finicky reptiles fell for it. ;-)
Here is a pretty good web page about Pignosed Puffers for you to check out too;
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/t_suvattii.htm
Good luck and I hope he eats for you soon!
At Your Service;
Chris Robbins
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