Puffer food

[rodger]

Since most puffers eat a very heavy crustacean diet, are they immune to thiasimine?

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[Aw3s0m3]

I've never thought about that. I'm interested as well. My best guess though is that a large part of their diet is also snails which, I believe, carry contain less or no thiaminase. Also the amount each species of crustacean carries is different so in the wild, they prey on a variety of different kinds. So I don't think they are immune to it but the variety makes it less of a danger rather than preying only on 1 species specifically. This is just my hypothesis. Hopefully an expert will chime in.


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[bottles]

No, they are not immune, however, I don't think that it's as much of a problem as many people think (just my opinion). I wouldn't recommend a diet that contains a lot of Thiaminase, but as mentioned above, a varied diet goes a long way.

Here is a pretty good article on Thiaminase: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_6/volume_6_1/thiaminase.htm

However, most of the time predatory fishes maintain a kind of balance between those prey fish rich in thiaminase and those fish rich in Vitamin B1. As long as the predator has a reasonably varied diet, it should get enough Vitamin B1 to stay healthy.

"Bivalves such as clams can are a good food within a varied diet, but many contain a lot of thiaminase and
should not be used exclusively; some however, notably cockles, contain little thiaminase and are consequently a better all-around food for mollusk-feeding predators such as pufferfish."

The article also has a list of common fish and crustaceans that contain Thiaminase.