# want to put a dwarf puffer to get rid of snails in my fish/RCS tank



## chiefroastbeef (Feb 14, 2011)

Hi guys,

I have a bad snail problem (100+ tiny snails now) after a hitchhiker snail got into the tank from a plant I bought. They are the small snails that are a couple of mm's. After trying to remove them manually by siphoning them out, they just keep creeping back in population.

Everyone is saying the Dwarf puffers are good for snail control since they love eating them. However, they are known to nip fins of fish, and eat shrimp. I am fine with that, since I will probably only keep the DP in there a week or so for it to eat the snails (my friend said the DP cleared his tank of snails in a few days). My only question is, will the DP kill the RCS for fun, and leave dozens of carcasses on the substrate? Or will it eat the RCS one at a time? I wouldn't want a bunch of dead shrimp causing water problems.

Thanks!


----------



## OverStocked (May 26, 2007)

The DP will eat the shrimp. quickly. all of them.


----------



## chiefroastbeef (Feb 14, 2011)

OverStocked said:


> The DP will eat the shrimp. quickly. all of them.


Would they eat the shrimp clean, or leave bits all over the place and make a mess? I don't mind if I lose the shrimp, since I have many more in my other tank. But I just don't want too much of a mess. I may have no choice, because the snails are driving me nuts!

Do you think the DP will eat the snails first, or go for the shrimp, and ignore the snails?

Thank you for the feedback.


----------



## Nubster (Aug 9, 2011)

Get some assassin snails.


----------



## fresh.salty (Jul 2, 2010)

If I was a DP I know I'd eat the shrimp first. lol


----------



## gordonrichards (Jun 20, 2009)

The dwarf (golden pea) puffs will go for the snails first, and baby shrimps.

They rarely bother other fish.

My girlfriend has 3 of them in her 40 breeder for a year+, and they chill out together, Rather cool fish! They really do require snails in their diet/live foods. Picky, but never seem to bother any fish. They just do their own thing.

Any other puffer would chow down on shrimp. 

Golden peas stay pretty darn small, about a dime/nickle.

-Gordon


----------



## DBL TAP (Apr 27, 2008)

Assassin snails took care of my snail problem -- so much so that now I have an algae problem. smh


----------



## chiefroastbeef (Feb 14, 2011)

I tried an assassin snail, left it in there for a month, it didn't do much. Do I need a squadron of them?

I think I will take Gordon Richard's advice and get a golden pea DP, I can stay to lose shrimp, and I hope to have the snails eradicated quickly. After the snails are gone, I will return it to the LHS or give to a friend.

Thank you everyone!


----------



## gtu2004 (Feb 17, 2010)

My 2 dwarf puffers (1 juvenile and 1 adult) are NOT interested in my fire red shrimp adults at all. They even run away when a shrimp comes too close. I can't say the same for baby shrimps though, as I only put the adults into the DP tank to clean some algae.

Mine also eat snails out of instinct. You'll see a huge drop in number of snails one day after introducing the DP into the tank. Whether the DP will eat the shrimps or not, I can't say for sure, but I'm leaning towards you're not gonna see many dead bodies.

Snails are not a requirement for DPs though. They can live without snails if fed other food. But they're fun to watch when they try to eat snails. And it's their natural food anyway.

Make sure you get DWARF puffers though.


----------



## rikardob (Aug 13, 2011)

gtu2004 said:


> Snails are not a requirement for DPs though. They can live without snails if fed other food. But they're fun to watch when they try to eat snails. And it's their natural food anyway.


Pretty sure this is wrong. Unless 100% of the forum members on the dwarf puffer forums are in on a large scale conspiracy.


----------



## chiefroastbeef (Feb 14, 2011)

gtu2004 said:


> My 2 dwarf puffers (1 juvenile and 1 adult) are NOT interested in my fire red shrimp adults at all. They even run away when a shrimp comes too close. I can't say the same for baby shrimps though, as I only put the adults into the DP tank to clean some algae.
> 
> Mine also eat snails out of instinct. You'll see a huge drop in number of snails one day after introducing the DP into the tank. Whether the DP will eat the shrimps or not, I can't say for sure, but I'm leaning towards you're not gonna see many dead bodies.
> 
> ...


Thank you for the input! That is good to hear, I will get some dwarf golden pea puffers, there is a big selection here in Hong Kong. Since I have over 70+ shrimp in the snail infested tank, I want to make sure I don't have 70+ dead carcasses all over the place.


----------



## garfieldnfish (Sep 25, 2010)

DP's can live without being fed snails. They will take grindal worms, detritus worms and frozen bloodworms without any problems. Problem is that their fused "teeth" get ground down when they eat snails, sort of like rodents need their teeth worn down by eating hard foods like nuts. I have always feed my DPs snails but not on a daily basis. They got them whenever I bought new plants. Having 19 fish tanks I am always in need of new plants and often they come with snails as hitchhikers. I used to put the plants in the puffer tank for a few days and then they were save to go to other tanks since the puffers remove eggs as well as snails. Now I have to resort to assassins and while they do a decent job, the DPs were more efficient.
My Dwarf puffers were, however, aggressive and I would not add any slow fish, fish with long finnage or fish large enough that could eat the 1" little monsters. Like all puffers they are poisonous and if eaten by another fish will most likely kill the fish in turn. I kept mine with a Chinese Algae Eater and they got along great.


----------



## wetworks (Jul 22, 2011)

Dwarf puffers will eat your snails, your shrimps, and then your fishes. Then they will try to eat you. I had several recently, and they are without a doubt the absolute quickest way to get rid of pest snails. Once the snails were gone they tried to eat all of my fish, including eating the tail off of an 8 inch Dojo Loach. I gave them to a friend, and he temporarily housed them with a small turtle. They ate all four feet off of the turtle. These guys were only about 1/2 inch long, but I think that someone mixed them with piranhas a few generations back. On the flip side, I have heard of people keeping these in a community tank with no trouble. This has just been my experience.


----------



## psalm18.2 (Oct 16, 2010)

Why not get a loach? They eat snails and are community friendly. I would not put a dwarf puffer w/ any other fish. That's asking for trouble. Not to mention they could over indulge in snails until they burst.


----------



## gryffin (Sep 18, 2009)

My dwarf puffers went on a killing spree- they killed at least 3 cherry shrimp in 15 minutes when I tried to keep them with my RCS colony. I pulled them and put them in their own tank.

Later, I tried them with some ghost shrimp as a test. I fed them so they were full, then I added the ghost shrimp. They killed all 6 within an hour. 

In both cases, they killed and left the carcasses, they did not eat the shrimp.

From what I've read, dwarf puffers tend to have their own personalities- and also tend to change their personalities without warning. If you try it, be prepared to pull them if they start killing off your shrimp...

Also, mine don't eat the whole snail- they pick out what they can reach with their beaks and then leave the rest. Obviously this will foul your tank. Now, instead of "free-feeding" my puffers whole snails, I keep the snails in a different tank, and then when I feed the puffers, I crush a couple of snails and then drop the crushed snails into the puffer tank. This way, they can reach all the meat and much less waste is left behind to decay.


----------



## gordonrichards (Jun 20, 2009)

Golden Pea Puffers stay this small.
About 1 inch in total fully grown.

They are not the larger "dwarf" puffers some people talk about...

Just a FYI photo,


----------



## gtu2004 (Feb 17, 2010)

rikardob said:


> Pretty sure this is wrong. Unless 100% of the forum members on the dwarf puffer forums are in on a large scale conspiracy.


DWARF puffers do NOT need snails to survive. A lot of people assume that puffers need snails to grind down their teeth, which is true for regular puffers, but NOT dwarf species. Dwarf puffers do not have teeth over growing problems, and they can totally live without snails.

Unless you have another reason for me being "wrong", I stand firm.

A lot of people assume dwarf puffers require same care as regular puffers, and they are the ones who are wrong.

Also you need to listen to people with first hand experience with DPs, not to those who only read on the internet.


----------



## gtu2004 (Feb 17, 2010)

wetworks said:


> Dwarf puffers will eat your snails, your shrimps, and then your fishes. Then they will try to eat you. I had several recently, and they are without a doubt the absolute quickest way to get rid of pest snails. Once the snails were gone they tried to eat all of my fish, including eating the tail off of an 8 inch Dojo Loach. I gave them to a friend, and he temporarily housed them with a small turtle. They ate all four feet off of the turtle. These guys were only about 1/2 inch long, but I think that someone mixed them with piranhas a few generations back. On the flip side, I have heard of people keeping these in a community tank with no trouble. This has just been my experience.


I kept my 2 with bunch of neons, tiger barbs, Kribs, and GBRs and almost no aggression ever happened in that "semi-aggressive community tank". Except one of the krib was quite aggressive, and kept chasing the other krib around, that's it.

DPs will do well with neons, but they are notorious for not doing well with loaches. So your Dojo loach was a mismatch. However the turtle case is a mishap.


----------



## gtu2004 (Feb 17, 2010)

gryffin said:


> My dwarf puffers went on a killing spree- they killed at least 3 cherry shrimp in 15 minutes when I tried to keep them with my RCS colony. I pulled them and put them in their own tank.
> 
> Later, I tried them with some ghost shrimp as a test. I fed them so they were full, then I added the ghost shrimp. They killed all 6 within an hour.
> 
> ...


Although my experience differed when keeping DPs with RCS, I don't doubt your case.

Part of the reason, just a guess, was the fact that the ghost shrimps were introduced "into" DP's tank, aka their established territory. If it was them getting introduced "into" ghost shrimp tank, the shrimps could have had a different ending. This could just be the reason, but as you said, each DP's personality differ from each other so much. So that's why I think it was entirely possible for your DP to have gone on a killing spree just coz he felt like an Anders Breivik one day.


----------



## gtu2004 (Feb 17, 2010)

gordonrichards said:


> Golden Pea Puffers stay this small.
> About 1 inch in total fully grown.
> 
> They are not the larger "dwarf" puffers some people talk about...
> ...


Yup, they are so small and cute. I sold all my fish because I wanted to go full shrimp but I just couldn't let go of these guys. I had inquiries that I had to turn down after I put the ad up for these guys.


----------



## garfieldnfish (Sep 25, 2010)

The pea puffer is the picture looks a lot like the DP's Petsmart sells, the same ones I believe everyone is talking about.
Mine lived for 7 years. I am not sure how long one of them would live without snails.


----------



## Bjielsl (Sep 13, 2011)

nubster said:


> get some assassin snails.


^ +1


----------



## chiefroastbeef (Feb 14, 2011)

Bjielsl said:


> ^ +1


How many assasin snails do I need (8gallon) for them to be effective? I have one in there right now, and it is totally useless. I will probably go with the golden pea DP based on all the testimonies on the web.

Thank you everybody, I greatly appreciate it.


----------



## rikardob (Aug 13, 2011)

gtu2004 said:


> DWARF puffers do NOT need snails to survive. A lot of people assume that puffers need snails to grind down their teeth, which is true for regular puffers, but NOT dwarf species. Dwarf puffers do not have teeth over growing problems, and they can totally live without snails.
> 
> Unless you have another reason for me being "wrong", I stand firm.
> 
> ...


I've done some follow up research and have come to the same conclusion you have about the snails not being needed in their diet. Thanks for clarifying that.


----------



## gordonrichards (Jun 20, 2009)

Puffs still like live food. Snails are still their drugs. If you get them see what happens, they are riot.

-Gordon


----------



## wetworks (Jul 22, 2011)

gtu2004 said:


> I kept my 2 with bunch of neons, tiger barbs, Kribs, and GBRs and almost no aggression ever happened in that "semi-aggressive community tank". Except one of the krib was quite aggressive, and kept chasing the other krib around, that's it.
> 
> DPs will do well with neons, but they are notorious for not doing well with loaches. So your Dojo loach was a mismatch. However the turtle case is a mishap.


I did not know about the loach issue, thanks! I think a lot of it just comes down to the 'personality' of the individual fish. I had three of them, and in addition to the Dojo Loach they also ate: 4 cherry barbs, 1 albino BN, 2 full grown bamboo shrimps (close to 4 inches each), and all of the snails in my tank. I moved them into a tank with three juvenile (3 inch) oscars and they did not eat them but it was not for lack of trying. They chased the oscars around the tank. I have never quite seen anything like that; oscars usually do not run from anything. In that tank, the only thing they killed was a common pleco about 4" long. I then gave them to my buddy, whose sun found a baby slider turtle in the creek by his house about 2 hours after he set them up in a tank at his house; needless to say they ended up being housed together. Within 24 hours they had eaten all four feet off of the turtle, who was only about 2" from the front to the back of its shell. I know that this is rather extreme, but this has been my only experience with dwarf puffers. Funny thing is, when there were snails in my tank, they got along fine with all my other fishes, but after that (about three weeks or so) they went bonkers.


----------



## wetworks (Jul 22, 2011)

gordonrichards said:


> Golden Pea Puffers stay this small.
> About 1 inch in total fully grown.
> 
> They are not the larger "dwarf" puffers some people talk about...
> ...


These were exactly the critters I had. They were only about 1/2 inch long; everything else in the tank was at least twice the size of them.


----------



## shrimpnmoss (Apr 8, 2011)

dwarf puffers are damn cute...big ol' eyes and all...


----------



## gryffin (Sep 18, 2009)

Mine are exactly like the ones in the pictures also. I'm pretty sure that they also killed 3 kuhli loaches. Killed, not eaten, again. It's true that I put the ghost shrimp in their tank. But when they killed the cherry shrimp, I had put the puffers in the cherry shrimp tank which had a population of more than 50 RCS. It took weeks for the shrimp to come out of hiding after I removed the puffers.

I agree that snails are not required, but I find that they are the easiest thing to feed to mine. My puffers won't eat any processed food, including frozen blood worms. They eat live brine shrimp and crushed snails. I also had some success with live black worms.


----------



## Brozilla (Jul 3, 2021)

They can do just fine without snails. I feed black worms almost exclusively and they are healthy and live to there full expected lifespan. They do love snails though. Give them one and they will spend the rest of the day scouring the entire tank from top to bottom looking for more.


----------

