Over Feeding Or Piggy Eater?

[dapope12]

i currently have 6 black neon tetras, 6 neon tetras, 6 (store finaly got some!) giant danios, and a lepord (sp?) puffer. i feed my fish every other day with a mix of flakes and brine shrimp, my puffer wont eat flakes and i hope to maybe train it but as for now it only likes the brine shrimp. i only feed my fish enough food so that they can finish it within 5 minutes, but after feeding my puffer gets a nice, big, plump belly. i dont know if im putting too much brine shrimp (the puffer is the only fish that eats it, the others do not like it i guess) or what? the only good thing is that in the morning when i turn the light on it doenst have the big belly...so is it just a piggy eater or am i overfeeding?

 

[ncjharris]

Although I have no experience with leopard puffers (here), our dwarf puffers and I think all puffers are carnivores and I would be very suprised if you could get it to take flakes.

In addition, most puffers (and I think this applies to leopards) can be very agressive, especially to slower, longer finned fish. While yours are quite fast, I would keep an eye on the temparment of him and consider that you may have to seperate him as it matures.

Finally, as for the belly. The same happens to our puffers. Puffers will gorge on food, as they do in the wild. I think I have read somewhere that there metabolism is based around the fact that in the wild meals may be far and few between, and they therefore 'store up' food as they eat, (like a hamster?!) to be digested later. This isn't the case with all puffers and I know that several species are harder to keep as they are fed thisway and the have a different metabolism.

In so much as how much can you feed - I tend to put in what ever they are eating (usually live food) in dribs and drabs - a bit first, then feed other tanks, then revist and add some more, and watch until they have finished. Its important that you don't feed too much as they will leave what they don't want and this will cause a mess in the tank.

HTH

 

[dapope12]

thanks, im going to start trying to feed the fish once a day but not as much as i would normally. as for my puffer being aggresive its only about as big as the black neon tetras so they should be fine for a while but i might be switching the tetras and danions over to my empty 20 gallon long and i will probably put larger fish...maybe an oscer if the puffer is big enough