Feeding????

[4rings1.8cT]

hey guys i just bought a black seahorse not sure of the name because the lfs didnt know, but he is black with some white with black spots. right now he is in my reef which is a 40 gallon breeder. the other tank he is going in is almost done with its cycle. my question is on sat when i brought him home i let him adjust to the tank and then later that night like 6hrs later i feed him. i did this by turning off my filters and feed him some mysis, i whatced him eat about 20 mysis. yesterday i tried to feed him and he didnt want anything to do with the food. so i tried this morning before i left for work and still no luck with him eating, should i try diff food? maybe he isnt really into mysis. should i get a 2nd seahorse maybe he needs a friend? could he get depressed being alone? and i know my reef tank is stocked with coipods.

 

[Octoshark]

Are you just putting mysis in and letting it go with the flow, or are you target feeding him with a tube or baster? Try target feeding him if you haven't already.

 

[4rings1.8cT]

I am using a baster with all water flow off

 

[Octoshark]

I just got 2 new erectus a few days ago and one of them was eating much better than the other one. For the one that was eating efficiently, I could just squirt some mysis infront of her with the baster and she would suck them all up. For the other one, I would squirt some mysis infront of her and she sometimes wouldn't get any of the mysis at all. So what I did was instead of squirting the mysis out of the baster, I gently squeezed the baster bulb to the point where the mysis was just about to come out but I wouldn't let the mysis actually shoot out. The mysis would be halfway in the baster and halfway out. When I got the mysis like that, I would very gently squeeze and let go, squeeze and let go, so softly that the mysis would remain at the tip of the baster but be kind of "shaking." This would get the horse's attention and give her more time to "lock on" to her food before sucking it up. By just squirting it at her most of the mysis would just go right past her and she wouldn't have time to lock on and suck any up even with all flow off. She wouldn't leave her hitch so even if she did lock on to a piece it would be too late since it would sink and be out of her reach.

So try getting the mysis at the tip of the baster and letting it "shake" a little to get your horse's attention. Hopefully that will work; it did for me.