Dwarf Seahorse Help

[Marc Daniels]

I have a 2.6g AIO that I want to setup with some dwarfs. My only concern is how to keep them fed if I am out of town or vacationing with the family. Curious if anyone has come up with a solution for feeding ponies for a week or two.

I know I can get them eating frozen baby brine with some work, but like I said, just curious if anyone has a better solution.

Thx

 

[rayjay]

I know of NO ONE who has successfully kept dwarfs on non live foods for any length of time.
In my own experience, I found very few that would keep eating the frozen nauplii for more than a few days.
I had better luck with storing the nauplii in the fridge for up to 10 days and when removing enough for a feeding and warming them up, a lot survived and were eaten no problem. As the days go on though, the amount of dead outnumbered the live although some of the dead ones got eaten up as well.
It wouldn't work IMO for a two week period though.
IMO, the only safe way to go away for a week is to have someone dependable that will feed enriched live nauplii during that time period.
You can hatch in advance, the amount of nauplii you need and then have them fed to keep alive, but the minder would have to remove enough each feeding in time to properly enrich them before adding to the dwarf tank.
Some have added copepods to the tanks but they get consumed fairly rapidly and I can't see them lasting for a week. In addition if you ARE culturing copepods, they don't reproduce very fast so are suitable for addition nutrition for the dwarfs but not as the main source.

 

[WitsNWrasse]

I always giggle because whenever I've had sea horses I don't ever take vacations away. "œStaycations" are the only option. Lol.


Pre hatching would be a bad habit to get into through, as brine shrimp grow very quickly, and depending how long you let them grow they could get too big for them to eat it. Bribe shrimp that is hatched within 24 hours also can't really be enriched, since their mouths aren't fully developed yet. (I have not tested this personally, but an aquarist at the aquarium I volunteer at looked at them under the microscope so I've believed them) so 48 h brine is best for feeding out since they are small but can still be gut loaded !

That being said, as long as you vary their food, they can thrive a few days off naups. There's been times where the aipastia has gotten out of control (and with feeding naups we couldn't get ahead of it) so we fed crushed mysis and calanus and they did fine.

However, with sea horses you have to go into it knowing you might just not be able to leave. The worst stuff happens when you're gone.


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[rayjay]

It's been my experience that adult H. zosterae can eat even adult brine.
That being said, I have NEVER had a problem feeding even 10 day old nauplii as they don't grow THAT fast.
I've been growing out artemia now for a couple of decades including many years for commercial purposes.
It is indeed true that the artemia nauplii have an incomplete digestive tract and cannot eat until the moult into the Instar II stage.
At this point it takes about 12 hours to gut load the nauplii but with a further 12 hour period using new water and enrichment, the nutrition with have begun to be assimilated into their flesh making them more nutritious.
As the artemia get larger, the enrichment time interval decreases so that adults can be gut loaded in 2-4 hours and assimilation occurs in 6-8 hours. (temps can affect the rate of enrichment)
In fifteen years now, I've never had aiptasia in any of my seahorse tanks. You can minimize the odds of it happening by starting with a sterile system.
Also, I sterilize the cysts or I decap them before hatching and that in itself tends to lessen the chances of aiptasia occurring.

 

[WitsNWrasse]

In fifteen years now, I've never had aiptasia in any of my seahorse tanks. You can minimize the odds of it happening by starting with a sterile system.

This was an open system, I should have mentioned that. System can't be sterile if the water is coming in from the ocean the point was just being that they were fine for a few days on only frozen while we got it under control.


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