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Well, I broke down and brought home 5 dwarf puffers tonight. They're quite small. The two largest are about 1cm and the 3 smaller ones between 1/2cm and 3/4cm! All but one show signs of having eaten recently, but all of them look healthy to my highly untrained eye. After being in their QT tank for about 15 minutes, they were swimming all over the place, checking out the driftwood and fake plants (a QT tank standard for me), and seriously checking out the baby snails on the walls. After I know these guys are healthy and all, they will eventually move up to my 29 gallon heavily planted tank. Now for the Q's!

1) I have the baby snails on the walls (not too many - maybe 10 or so), and frozen I have baby brine shrimp, brine shrimp and bloodworms. Any other food suggestions or comments on what I should have available? Do you think the bloodworms would be too large or do puffers tend to tear off bites?

2) A few of the baby snails are malaysian trumpet snails - too young to have anything other than a clear shell at this point - will those be OK?

3) When I eventually migrate my bolivian rams to another tank and the DPs into the 29, will there be a problem if there are malaysian trumpet snail adults in the sand substrate (as well as small pond snails)?

Thanks,

Eric

You've listed the only things mine will eat+ snails.The bloodworms will be fine, some people chop them up. The MTS's shells will be too hard for them to crunch. They will suck the snail out of them. Get pond snails. You need to get a small tank to breed them. If you try to do it in their tank, you won't have any. Size of snail tank would depend on how many puffs you're going to feed. I use a 5gal for my five, but I have also introduced the snails to my other tanks. On snail day, I go through all of the tanks and harvest them. For the snail tank, I've left mine bare-bottom. They make alot of poo, so it's easier for me to see and vacuum it out. Change water often, keep temp above 75, and feed flake, tablets, any left overs. The eggs will be in a small gel-ike blob with small dots in it. It takes about 2 weeks for them to hatch

Good luck,
Kim

Thanks Kim! I've got the 29 to harvest young snails from now (there is also a small population of small pond snails in there too). I may try breeding some snails in the 3 gallon I have for right now. Eventually, the 10 will be the snail tank and the 29 for the little puffers.

They are incredibly cool little fish. Mine seem real active today. They'll get bloodworms for dinner tonight!

Eric