Dwarf Puffers and MTS?

tomm10

tomm10

Prodigal Son
Oct 15, 2003
751
0
0
Oxford, MA
www.tomwalkerportraits.com
I have a tank with some dwarf puffers in it. This tank is in desperate need of a cleaning crew. Obviously pond snails don't last long enough to do any cleaning. I'm not sure I want to risk putting amano shrimp in the tank as I've heard puffers tend to find them tasty too.

Its my understanding that Malaysian Trumpet Snail shells are too hard for the puffer to break through. If I put some in the tank would the puffers run a real risk of breaking their beaks trying to get in?

Most of the time the puffers just sort of suck the pond snails out of their shells rather than breaking them. Would that mean that the MTS wouldn't last long either?

Has anyone had experience with this?

Tom

*Edit: My bad, I forgot we're supposed to keep Dwarf Puffer posts to the Brackish site. Feel free to move this there if that's still the case. Sorry.
 
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the whole time I had my dwarf puffers, they never broke a shell. they would always suck them out of the shells and got to where they wouldn't even bother eating snails anymore. We started with 4, one was killed and 2 others died mysteriously for no reason. the last one had gotten very picky about his food and would only eat hikari freezedried bloodworms. he would not take any frozen bloodworms or eat any snails anymore. he had many live snails in his tank and wouldn't even try to eat them. towards the end he refused to eat anything and wasted away. they were very young still so I'm not sure if they start cracking shells when they get older or what. Kyle
 
My Two Cents:

I have one adult DPuffer in a 240G planted tank. Naturally, it's packed full of MTS. I have never seen beak damage on "The Destroyer" (the Missus just calls him "Gozer"), nor have I ever seen smashed shells. That tank is now happily free of pond snails, however.

In fact, The Destroyer was soo good at his job that I have employed his younger cousin "X the Eliminator" in a couple of other pond snail problem tanks. Neither of them disturb my amanos or MTS, and I never feed them anything but they are both fat as heck.
 
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My dwarf puffer used to love eating MTSes. He would wait until they were crawling along, then he would swim alongside them and suck them out of their shells, or just peck at the bigger ones bodies and eat them piece by piece. But they can be picky, so you never know. After about three years he died. I got another who doesn't seem interested in MTSes at all, alas.
 
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