filing puffers teeth?

[luv4reef]

I have a new porc. puffer whose teeth look pretty long & I have read you should make sure they do not grow too long or the puffer will be unable to eat. My question is how do I prevent this or file them down? Also he is not as brown as the others I have seem (he is very light colored) could this from the stress of moving to the fish store then the next day to my tank?
Thanks!!:happyfish

 

[lionfish28]

Ok,i ask the same thing to the manager at my LFS and they told me "if your puffer grows its teeth very long take a shell and hold it in the water and the puffer will think its food when he bites it,it will file the teeth down.Do it one day a week."
Like a hermit crab shell. I tryed it......it works!:yes:

 

[lionfish28]

I forgot.......does your puffer eat out of your hand?Train it to eat out of your hand.Try getting some shrimp with the shell ON and feed the shrimp to your puffer,that will help too.....but the hermit crab shell method well help better,and faster

 

[luv4reef]

thanks so much, I will try that. I just got him today so he has not eaten yet but I will also try the shrimp w/shells too!

 

[lionfish28]

Ok,you know that puffer fish will out grow yer tank,right?Have you been to a local aquarium that has a por.puffer?Imagin a basketball in your tank.Well you should be fine with the puffer for years. Try training him to eat out of yer fingers,ok

 

[beach bum]

FYI, the most practical way is not holding a hermit shell in the tank once a week. Buy a couple fresh clams from your seafood market, pry one open with a knife, and drop one half in the tank and leave it there.
Even when the meat is gone they will still scrape it looking for more. If your puffer is small then remove most (not all) of the meat so that you can leave it in there without it going uneaten.
good luck, and if worse comes to worse - use nail clippers, not a file! :yes:

 

[luv4reef]

If it ever came to me actually having to clip them, would I hold the fish, wouldn't that stress him out or hurt him?
Thanks for the clam info!

 

[pufferman]

it's kinda tricky to file down their teeth because you never know when your porky's going to puff up while holding him....ouch! shrimp shells are not really hard enough, but hermit shells are too hard for your porky to crack....so try small live crabs...it'll stimulate his feeding response....and at the same time will help file his teeth down...hope this helps!

 

[moraym]

To keep my brackish puffers' teeth down I use live snails from the LFS. They give me a bunch of the annoying freshwater snails for free, the kind that love freshwater plants and spawn like crazy. The small puffers love to chew them up. It's interesting to watch them slowly stalk the snail, bite the shell in half and suck out the the snail. Although i don't think this would do much for the larger saltwater puffers.

 

[conogre]

IF you ever have to work on a puffer's teeth, DO NOT let it inflate with air!
They can get bubles trapped and end up wth gangrene of the bowels, a really bad way to lose a fish.
While crabs are good, and in fact are Mother Nature's puffer tooth files folks not living near the caost can get stuck for big bucks.
Two other alternatives are 1) crab legs with the shell still on....I ue tin snips to cut them into 1"-2" pieces and once they are cut up you'll see it's not as expensive as it sounds, and 2) freshwater crayfish...very few puffes and porks can pass up a live crayfish and by the time they munch the claws and all, they've had a healthy tooth workout.
While FW foods aren't suggested for marine fish, the crustaceans aren't all that bad, particularly as long as they aren't the only source of food.

 

[petem]

I have had my puffer for over a month, and he's a great addition to my tank. Right from the beginning, I fed him Krill right from my fingers. He comes right to the top, and he practically takes them from my hand. I was also told to drop in some clams so they can file their teeth down. But then another LFS, told me that's not the way to do it. He suggested I buy some fake coral, yeah, the ones that they sell for $35.!!! He would chomp on it periodically and that should solve his teeth. Oh, I also started giving him frozen prawns.