Dwarf seahorse and adult brine

[kizanne]

I've read that the dwarf seahorse needs baby brine or copepods.

Can they eat adult brine?
Adolescent brine?

Any idea what the max food size is?

I know nutrition the baby brine is better than adult but I can gut load them with selco and live tetra, iso, nanno combo.

I do have copepods but want to make sure I can feed them. I can hatch baby brine but prefer not to do that everyday. I have on hand some adult brine. I can hatch and keep baby brine.

Also does greenwater bother seahorses?

I have a greenwater copepod tank set up for fish larva but I'm getting seahorses this week... so I can make another copepod, greenwater, seagrass/caulerpa tank and through in some brine every morning.

 

[gogo7]

i want dwarfs..... you americans are lucky.
i've read just a few days old for the bbs kiz. and def. with the nanno and the selco for added flavour....
i'm jealous.

 

[rayjay]

First of all, for dwarf tanks, starting sterile IS better. (re your signature)
As for food, you can't culture enough copepods for the needs of the dwarfs so the base food is enriched brine shrimp nauplii that can be eaten by both the fry and the adults. Some adults are capable of eating adult brine.
You can add mysid shrimp to the tank and the dwarfs can feed off the mysid nauplii, and you can add copepods as well to augment the feeding.
You don't have to hatch every day, but you should be enriching every day.
Best enrichment IMO is Dan's Feed from seahorsesourc.com.
I don't like the emulsions like Selco/Selcon myself, first because they don't store well, and second, they often smother the brine nuaplii before proper gut loading and enrichment occurs.
Enrichment is best done in two 12 hour stages with new water and enrichment for each of the two stages. Stage one will gut load them in 12 hours, but after the second stage the enrichment will become assimulated into the flesh making them MUCH more nutritious.
Adult brine can be gut loaded in about 4 hours, but for assimulation to occure you need at least one 12 hour stage.
I personally wouldn't use greenwater in any seahorse display tank as it is food to feed nasty bacteria.
I use it in standard seahorse fry containers though as the water is being constantly changed in them.
It's also best if you incorporate a method to remove the uneaten brine before the next feeding as they quickly loose their enrichment quality and you want them to feed only off the newly enriched brine.

gogo7, we can get them here in Canada also, but it's expensive.
I brought an order in along with erectus from seahorsecorral.com some years ago, and yveterinaryian (Woodstock area) recently brought 100 in and they've be on the go now for about 7 or 8 months I think.
Here's Her Thread On Them
Sea U Marine in Markham has occasionaly brought them in when he brings in an erectus order.

 

[gogo7]

First of all, for dwarf tanks, starting sterile IS better. (re your signature)
As for food, you can't culture enough copepods for the needs of the dwarfs so the base food is enriched brine shrimp nauplii that can be eaten by both the fry and the adults. Some adults are capable of eating adult brine.
You can add mysid shrimp to the tank and the dwarfs can feed off the mysid nauplii, and you can add copepods as well to augment the feeding.
You don't have to hatch every day, but you should be enriching every day.
Best enrichment IMO is Dan's Feed from seahorsesourc.com.
I don't like the emulsions like Selco/Selcon myself, first because they don't store well, and second, they often smother the brine nuaplii before proper gut loading and enrichment occurs.
Enrichment is best done in two 12 hour stages with new water and enrichment for each of the two stages. Stage one will gut load them in 12 hours, but after the second stage the enrichment will become assimulated into the flesh making them MUCH more nutritious.
Adult brine can be gut loaded in about 4 hours, but for assimulation to occure you need at least one 12 hour stage.
I personally wouldn't use greenwater in any seahorse display tank as it is food to feed nasty bacteria.
I use it in standard seahorse fry containers though as the water is being constantly changed in them.
It's also best if you incorporate a method to remove the uneaten brine before the next feeding as they quickly loose their enrichment quality and you want them to feed only off the newly enriched brine.

gogo7, we can get them here in Canada also, but it's expensive.
I brought an order in along with erectus from seahorsecorral.com some years ago, and yveterinaryian (Woodstock area) recently brought 100 in and they've be on the go now for about 7 or 8 months I think.
Here's Her Thread On Them
Sea U Marine in Markham has occasionaly brought them in when he brings in an erectus order.

thanks rayjay, i'll try again. i really really want dwarfs....
i assume dwarves eat rotifers as well.?

 

[gogo7]

wow thanks rayjay, i had to sign in, what a thread

 

[kizanne]

Thanks for the info Rayjay.

I think I'm going to try a very light greenwater (tetra) to help the copepods reproduce. I'll start with baby brine and see how they handle it as it gets slightly older. I do plan to enrich in 12 hour periods with refreshed brine 2xdaily. I have some grass shrimp that I'll put in there to clean up any dead brine and hopefully to send up some babies. My hubbies tank has pistol shrimp larva sometimes and I have peppermint shrimp larva sometimes though my mandarins and other fish eat those quickly. My parvo copepods are really producing well right now so I can keep them in parvo's to at least supplement nutrition. The tangerines and tisbe's are also doing fairly well too. If I ever get my A. Tonsa going then I'll try an outdoor pond like Luis.

Until my mandies give me larva I can give them quite a few copepods.

Now I just have to figure out how to keep the oxygen up. I've read that they sometimes have trouble with a bubbler.

 

[rayjay]

i assume dwarves eat rotifers as well.?

While they will most likely eat the rotifers, the rotifers will be of little value to them nutrition wise as they are a WAY too small and need so many that the day isn't long enough for them to feed on enough to survive on.

 

[rayjay]

Now I just have to figure out how to keep the oxygen up. I've read that they sometimes have trouble with a bubbler.

I use open ended air lines in ALL my seahorse tanks, no air stones of any kind.
The larger bubbles work to disturb the water's surface promoting a better gas exchange, and while you could do this with a power head, a power head can lead to other problems like needing protection to stop seahorses from getting sucked up.
At one time people used to think that gas bubble disease was in part caused by microbubbles from air stones and skimmers but I think that has mostly been dispelled now.

 

[cjm3]

Can they eat adult brine?
Adolescent brine?

The answer that I can give you is, yes. DSH can eat adult brine shrimp. A closer look at brine shrimp will show their "bulk' is made up of swimming appendages. As they are 'snicked' these "swimmers" do not hamper, or get stuck. They fold up making them much thinner then the look.
But (there's always one of those) as rayjay said, we MUST feed them before they go in with the DSH as they have very little nutritional value with out feeding. There are several ways we can feed brine shrimp, but rayjay's method is very sound and often used.

Back in 1994 I had a DSH tank. This was before I had a computer or before I had access to the internet or before there was much online information about keeping Seahorses.
I purchased a 'portion' of adult brine shrimp each week to feed them. I used a locally packaged micro-algae as food for them and kept them in my refrigerator.
All my DSH were female so (unfortunately) I didn't have fry to worry about, that would have required newly hatched brine shrimp, or similar sized live food.

Cultural tanks for mysid, or copepods, or even brine shrimp are a fairly big undertaking. Seeding the tanks with copepods after it's cycled, and keeping a few mysids in the tank is a better way to offer some addition live food. We must think of, and treat, mysid shrimp as a 'tankmate' or part of the 'CUC' and act properly before we add them to the aquarium.

In all my tanks, since the 1994 one, I've fed newly hatched and enriched (or fed) adult brine shrimp. Hatching brine is 'involved' but not hard. It is a necessary thing that we have to do in order to keep them succesfully. I like (actually LOVE) different live foods for them but the hatched brine is the easiest of the better choices.
To keep DSH we must be prepared (with equipment) and ready to set aside the needed (daily) time to keep them healthy so we can become responsible Dwarf Seahorse keepers.


:hammer:
It's my personal opinion that Dwarf Seahorses are NOT the easiest Seahorse to keep.
A healthy, captive-bred H. erectus or H. reidi, that is eating frozen foods is much, much easier to keep.
Many believe that since DSH can live in a smaller aquarium that they must be easy. But the need to supply live food, however we get it, adds a level of difficulty. A smaller tank, with 2 or 3 daily feedings of live food(s) means this tank can become polluted easily.

:bum:
Chuck

 

[kizanne]

Well my dwarfs arrived Wednesday. Nobody had dwarfs captive bred in stock so these are wild caught. Someone had babies in the bag. Some of the adults looked skinny. I put them temp in a one gallon so I could really get good density on the food. I'm also redesigning my permanent home based on additional reading. So far all adults are alive I lost 2 babies right after they got here. They seem to prefer Copepoda over brine. I haven't lost a baby in the last 24 hours so I am hoping to keep the last three. I wasn't quite prepared for babies quite yet. The adults are doing well it seems.