Young MBU feeding schedule

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CoryWM

CoryWM

Candiru
MFK Member
Jan 13, 2008
368
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48
Everett, Washington
www.tankgeek.com
I'm wondering wondering what people are feeding their 4-12 inch mbus each day to obtain the 1 inch a month growth?

My puffer has put on about an inch since I got him in November. It's now been 5 months. I did put him through rounds of prazi pro at the begining. I'm fearing that perhaps there is still parasites.

I've fed him market shrimp, clams, bloodworms. He won't touch anything alive, no guppies, snails, or ghost/cherry shrimp. Each night he'll eat about 1 whole market shrimp or 2 halves of clam. He'll eat till he's full I assume. Definitely high centered on his belly. Loves to eat, follows my hand outside the tank for food etc. His belly stays full for hours. I have never observed any parasites hanging from his anus either.

I've considered feeding him before and after work. I'm just not sure how often I need to be feeding him. At 5 inches or so, he cold need more food to properly grow I suppose.

Currently lives in a 300g 6x5x18tall tank. With automatic water change of 2 gallons per hour. Nitrates never go above 20.

He's currently housed with a large shoal of clown loaches and a few exotic plecos.

I'm not looking to "grow him fast" however after 5 months, I wan't to make sure there isn't something else wrong.

If he was to still have parasites, should I do another round of prazi pro soaked food. Or move him to a 65g hospital tank and treat with lavimole?
 
Diet seems to be okay?

Although i definitely wouldn't advise feeding a MBU guppies since they aren't piscivores...

Cherry Reds would be way too small for him to bother with and anyway market prawns are probably better & safer for him (parasite wise)...

Another thing you could try feeding him is Mussels with the half shell for dentistry purposes...
 
Fat Homer;5013157; said:
Diet seems to be okay?

Although i definitely wouldn't advise feeding a MBU guppies since they aren't piscivores...

Cherry Reds would be way too small for him to bother with and anyway market prawns are probably better & safer for him (parasite wise)...

Another thing you could try feeding him is Mussels with the half shell for dentistry purposes...
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I agree with the guppy thing. The live shrimp thing makes sense also. At this point I was seeing what else I could add in to his diet. The guppies would not have been a very long term thing as he'd be eating show strains of guppies that are meant for aquabid.

The mussels have more digestive properties than clams on the half shell?
 
They do not have the fastest growth rate in the world, my little Mbu puts on about a half inch a month and I feed him 2x a day with a shrimp cut into bits and also clams and mussels on the half shell...it just takes time.
 
Try adding garlic to his food & soak it in liquid fish vitamins, like Zoecon or Vita-Chem.
 
Pufferpunk;5015642; said:
Try adding garlic to his food & soak it in liquid fish vitamins, like Zoecon or Vita-Chem.
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I was actually gonna bring some Vita-Chem home from work if I can remember today.

I'm feel a lot better now. This fish is my baby. When you hear other toddlers walking at a young age and yours isn't crawling yet you start worrying! However my guy eats like a champ and looks really healthy, slow and steady should win the race :)
 
my little guy isn't growing too fast either. He eats some market shrimp and then snails...loves snails!
 
Got my MBU 7 months ago at a skinny 11" he is now close to 20" fat and healthy. In the beginning he ate just clams and snails.
But that was a lot of work taking out all the shells and not get much food. I fed a couple of crawdads I bought at my LFS he loved them so I decided to trap live crawdads in our lake I live on. Last summer I trapped over 300 crawdads when that ran out over the winter I found you can buy big bags of them frozen at the Asian market. What mine gets daily is 4-5 frozen crawdads 3-4 frozen market size shrimp. Some days just crawdads and some days just shrimp. I feed till he doesn't want any more.
 
I fed my little guy twice a day, usually ate up to 4 pieces of frozen shrimp. My 23" MBU eats up to 10 pieces of frozen shrimp a day, the most is 17 pieces in one sitting. He loves going after craws. Usually afterwards he goes to the texas holey rock and chews it up a bit to keep his dentures in check.
 
Yesterday was the first day feeding with Vitachem. Clams soaked in it. Today he had white stringy feces.

I'm wondering if the vitamins are killing off some IPs, or if he has IPs and they're presenting the white stringy poop as of today.

I'm thinking another round of prazi-pro soaked food is in order.
 
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