Can a fish eat himself sick?

[Brian Ward]

My new porcupine puffer eats more than I have ever seen a fish eat - ever. He's about 5" and easily eats 5-6x the amount my 10" rabbitfish eats, and does it very fast much to the rabbitfish's dismay. I'm feeding 3-4 gel cubes of formula VHP which the puffer will eat if I put them in first, but he really doesn't like them. The I add 3-4 cubes of some mixture of Emerald Entree, Marine Cuisine, Angel & Butterfly formula. As soon as the rabbitfish begins to gnaw on one of these, the puffer steals it out of his mouth and swallows the cube whole. This continues until there are no more cubes.

 

I actually saw the puffer not be interested in the food until the rabbitfish became interested. Last night, the rabbitfish was spooked by something (he spookes easily) and hid for a couple minutes. While he was hiding, I added all the cubes of food and the puffer saw them but wasn't interested. Then the rabbitfish came out and began to eat and the puffer instantly went after he one the rabbitfish was eating - stealing it from him and swallowing whole. If the cube isn't thawed enough for him, I've actually seem him spit out the one he just stole, and go steal the new one the rabbitfish just found. This is obviously making for some minor aggression, but nothing to be concerned about yet.

 

My main concern is the shear quantity the puffer seems to be consuming. Anyone else see this? Will the fish stop eating when he's full? Or do I need to do something to keep him from eating to death?

[ctenophore]

Sounds like my kids. Have you tried a "time-out" chair?

[gastone]

Brian, I've got no experience with puffers, but certain fish will gorge themselves if presented with the opportunity for food. This is speculation on my part, but as puffers move quite slow, food is harder for them to get... in nature they have to work/look hard for their food so meals. I'm assuming they spend most of their days hunting without ever getting much to eat. As I'm sure you are aware, there are all kinds of health issues associated with eating too much (I'd think that in this regards, fish and people aren't all that different).

 

FWIW I saw a puffer during the last social. It was producing a poop that my mastiff would have been proud of.

 

Garrett.

[Brian Ward]

Brian, I've got no experience with puffers, but certain fish will gorge themselves if presented with the opportunity for food. This is speculation on my part, but as puffers move quite slow, food is harder for them to get... in nature they have to work/look hard for their food so meals. I'm assuming they spend most of their days hunting without ever getting much to eat. As I'm sure you are aware, there are all kinds of health issues associated with eating too much (I'd think that in this regards, fish and people aren't all that different).

 

FWIW I saw a puffer during the last social. It was producing a poop that my mastiff would have been proud of.

 

Garrett.

 

It is the same puffer - I got the porcupine puffer from AquaCo at the last social.

[WDLV]

I have seen it happen. At least that was my conclusion. I had an algae blenny once that was hired for a particularly tough job in one of my sumps. He put a huge dent in the problem and died with an extremely destended abdomin. I assume he ate himself to death.

[extreme_tooth_decay]

The porcupine puffer I used to have used to chop food up and spread it around the tank a lot more than actually eat it.

 

It got to the point where the other fish would just hand around him at feeding time and eat from the giant mess he was making.

 

Very cool fish. Every now and then (very unusually), i would come in the room and he would be floating around, puffed up. Then when he saw he, he would deflate. It's like he was bored.

 

tim