Lets get ready to Mbu!
So you want a big adorable puffer but don't know how to go about it?
Here is a guide.
Pre planning.
1. You will need 5000$ You will not need this immediately but having it on hand before hand will relieve stress of trying to scrap it together further down the road.
2. You will need a big space for the final tank. A space that can support a lot of weight, say in your basement.
3. Start growing lots and lots of pond snails. Salt every tank you have with them get a trash bin "snail pail" going.
4. Put a worm bin in your kitchen for all your veggie scraps.
5. Start aging your starter tank in. You can start with a cheap craigslist 75-150 gal tank.
6. You will also need local Asian Groceries. Nice big ones. Blessed be the Asian Groceries.
7. If you can grow huge quantities of
mystery snails this will be really good down the road. I have had no luck at breeding them.
8. Start looking at craigslist every day for a big tank over 300gal.
In a few months when you have lots and lots of snails and red wigglers you can move to the next step.
Starting out:
You do not need the final tank to begin with as long as you have the 5000$ making interest somewhere.
So you go to your LFS and meet your 200-300$ Mbu. Make sure it is eating. Mine lived at the LFS eating snails I'd bring it for a few months before coming home. Your LFS probably doesn't work this way unless you and the owner are friends. Always make friends with the LFS owners.
When you get home you will have something that looks like this
Tiny and adorable.
If you can start it in a small tank like a 20 gal so you can blast it with
general cure. Hit that thing with the API General Cure (or your preferred anti-parasitic) because ALL puffers come with parasites. After 2 weeks hit it again. Follow the directions of course.
Once it has been totally cleansed of unwanted internal fauna it can move to its first tank and will start eating snails as you can see from the belly on that one looking like a bag of marbles.
If yours is to small to handle large pond snails that is where the worms come in. Worms are also good as filler food. You will not feed worms for long but when the fish is tiny they are a real boon.
when they are small they may even bury themselves to be even more adorable.
How much does it cost to feed an Mbu?
It costs ~20$ for the first 6 months if you have your snails and worms waiting. The ~20$ is a 5lb block of small shrimp from the Asian Grocery (get head on if you can, if they have horns just pull those off before feeding). when you get you block take it home and thaw it in a sink of cold water. Now throw some
silicone sheets in half sheet pans and lay the shrimp out 1 layer thick and not touching and freeze them again. When frozen put them in a gallon ziplock or two. You will have to freeze many sheets worth of shrimp to refreeze all of them so plan a night of Netflix.
Once your Mbu is ~3" long it can eat shrimp (remember we do not count the tail in the length). Watching your little fish scarf up a shrimp that is 1/3-1/2 its size is funny. Your Mbu will love shrimp.
Shrimp only gets fed ever few days for 2 reasons.
1. Your Mbu loves shrimp and will begin to pout if you feed shrimp every day and then try to get it to eat crunchies like snails.
2. Well I guess there was just one reason. Shrimp will really help you conserve snails while it grows large enough to move up the crunchy chain to the next food.
Also with shrimp you can sneak in veggies in the form of spirilina. I also consider adding astaxanthin to see if that gives a color change that is pleasing.
Your ~6 month old Mbu will looks something like this
When they are ~4-6" you can begin buying cockles and sea snails from the Asian Grocery. You will have to open these but your puffer will learn they are food. snails you just pull the snail out a bit. Cockles you pry half open. Man I wish I had some mystery snails.
If your Asian Grocery has little 1" frozen clams you can try these.
When they are this size you will want to train yourself to feed them with stainless tongs. when it gets big enough to casually eat and adult clam your wrist is not nearly as durable as the clam and your fingers are not as durable as your wrist.
After your Mbu is around a year old you have a 9-10" fish (don't count the tail) that looks like this.
At ~8" the world of food really opens up. You can start buying green mussels or black lip mussels at the Costco or local fish monger. With these up can just pinch off the tip of them to get them to sink if they float. When you bring home your live mussels just freeze them all immediately. These are soft enough you puffer should be able to deal with them itself.
Your fish monger may also have live
crayfish. If you get these put them in an empty 20 gal and blast them with General Cure. Crayfish are raised in outdoor ponds so who knows what is in them. Also keep the top of the crayfish tank sealed. You will not believe how good crayfish are at escaping. If they escape they will roam your house until they die in places where you cannot find them but you can smell them.
Someone here said to put out bowls of water to attract them to avoid this.
If you have crayfish living where you live time to get crayfish traps and a fishing license. Remember to blast wild caught with GC>
Adding live crayfish to your puffer's tank is the best thing you can do for its brain. It now has something to hunt and they love hunting. Always remember to remove the flexible part of the claws on the crayfish so they can't injure your puff.
At this size your puff can also begin to handle smaller ~2" frozen clams from the Asian Grocery. Even at this size you will still have to open up cockles because they have really thick shells.
At this point you should be looking at deploying the final tank. Right now I see a 350gal (about as small as you would want to go) on craigslist for ~1,500$.
Odds are you will want to go a lot larger than this and that is where your 5000$ comes in. You are looking at building it yourself for that money. How you want to build it is up to you and Youtube is full of videos.
Hopefully you can build out ~1000gal with massive filtration.
Friends for your Mbu.
Mbus don't seem to care about small fish in the tank with them. Adding larger fish is a gamble. Adding larger fish that will go after the Mbu's food is putting their lives on a timer.
I also wouldn't add something that may attack the Mbu. No Doviis and such.
What about another Mbu? Some people make it work, I wouldn't gamble it. If I was rich I might have a few in tanks next to each other to see if there was hate. The end problem is how large a tank/pool you would need to have several of them. Even with a 5000 gal tank I'd consider a herd of Mbus in there to be a time bomb. If you want to try breeding, time bomb is a risk you'd have to take. If you want to try breeding odds are you know a lot more about puffers than I do.
How can I make my Mbu more active?
Feed it less. Mbu are responsible eaters and will eat until they are full. Then they power down to sleep it off. A full puffer is not interested in you or anything else, all it cares about is sleeping off its Thanksgiving meal.
Do I need air in my tank?
Yes, this is a big fish with big air needs. 2 FX6s agitating the surface of the water will not bring in enough air.
Do I need plants?
Need? No, but a giant pile of greenery to hide in will please the fish and it forgives a multitude of sins when it comes to the
nitrate generation.
Do I need a litter scoop?
Not starting out but you will.
Can I put my hand in the tank when the puffer is full?
I do, sometime you have to shove the fish around to clean up. Always be ready to move fast though and never take your eyes off the fish.
Can I pet the puffer?
Yes, you will end up petting your puffer. You will break down and be unable to resist. Never touch their tail though, they do not like tail touches.
If I forget to use tongs and my fish eats my finger can I get it back?
At that point it is your finger or your fish, which do you love more? ALWAYS USE TONGS! That said I often forget to so I consider counting to 10 on my fingers to be an ephemeral thing.
How long will my Mbu live?
Plan for 10 years. This is not a big pleco where you have to figure out who to leave it to in your will.
How big will my Mbu get?
I plan for 3 feet. The internet says 30" but I know how wrong it is about species that are not common/popular. Nothing like being told a rhino pleco gets to 9" max, while you are looking at the 18" rhino in your tank. Long ago I saw a site that said Mbus get to 48" but I can no longer find that site.
Do I need to cover my tank?
Your puffer is expensive and you love it, so yes. Mine has never jumped enough to hit the cover but that doesn't mean it can't.
So about that Tetrodotoxin?
Well they say that they only get it in the wild from stuff that is in nature, so you home fish should be safe. I wonder about that because mine will eat wild caught food from that same mentioned nature. Don't try eating your puffer and don't touch it with open wounds just to be safe. Do not lick the puffer!
They don't have live crayfish near me but the grocery has a 5lb bag of Cajun boil crawfish can I use those?
No, just no. Eat those your self.
Why does the internet say it costs 300$ per month to feed an Mbu?
They are feeding it special seafood for fish that has the fish tax applied. If you feed it human food from the Asian Grocery it is much cheaper. Also growing/catching your own food saves a bundle. If you catch pile of crayfish in the summer freeze the extra ones live.
Can I save money by feeding it fish?
I wouldn't give it a taste for fish if you have or will have other fish in the tank.
Should I thaw frozen food before feeding?
I do. I hate biting into frozen things.
