This site will have information for trimming the teeth of a large Fahaka Pufferfish- Ollie. He (or she?) is nearly a foot long and has had a very crunchy diet his entire life, but the teeth just kept growing. Ollie has two siblings who are smaller (in separate tanks of course) and their teeth are fine so far, on the same diet. Ollie just grew very large, very fast, including the teeth!
Signs of trouble: Ollie started having trouble grabbing red claw crabs as his teeth were getting a bit more “buck-toothed” in appearance. Then he stopped eating snails, and I knew it was time to face my worst fishkeeping fear- trimming those teeth using a dremel saw blade! Yikes! We could not find too much online about doing this for the very large puffs, although there are some excellent posts about the smaller puffs, and we did find one about trimming the teeth of “Fat Elvis” which was very useful. SO, having successfully trimmed Ollie’s teeth I decided to set up this blog to help others who might be also wondering about the process.
SO, we assembled the tools – it is very important to get the extremely slim diamond-tipped cutting wheel for the dremel tool. Apparently there is a wheel that falls apart and that would be bad. We chose a plug-in dremel; although water is involved it does not come in contact with the tool, as the puffer’s head will be temporarily lifted out of the water.
We had seen others using syringes to put behidn the puffers teeth, so got several sizes ready. In the end, his teeth were pretty tightly together and these did not work. Our friend Karen, who was assisting with the procedure -thank goodness- suggested a butter knife (non-serrated), and that worked much better and also gave something to drill against without fearing that I would cut into the poor puffer’s tongue!
Karen had also made some cool leather straps that we thought could shield the lips, with the two top teeth sticking through them. That worked kind of, but the butter knife was definitely best!
Ollie the Pufferfish 