how to enrich food for seahorses

[Allmost]

HEllo all, I have 4 horses in a 25G connected to my reef tank.

water parameters are perfect as the reef tank is on zeo and ULNS

temp is a tad high about 79 :S

recently, my horses which were yellow and red have started fading color !

they are trained to take mysis shrimp (PE mysis) but wont take anything else lol

once a month I give them live food (SW molly fry gut loaded with marine algae and phyto)

not I was reading and I found out seahorses do not have the ability to make red and yellow color pigments called carotenoids, and they need to have that in their food
there is a enriching powder in hawaii names "Vibrance" which has this, although I cant get any, does anyone know of any other enrichment methods or products that can increase the color pigments ?

I wish my horses were trained to eat a carrot daily hahaha

right now, I enrich their food 3 times a week with cyclop-eze and Selcon.


thanks all.

 

[namxas]

what you're looking for is Astaxanthin, which can be found at the health food store. i believe one brand name is NatuRose.

to be honest, we've never noticed any difference in enriching our SH's food. they get Hikari mysis and BS+ once a day, altho they hunt pods in the macro algae between meals.

4 SH in a 25 gal is pretty tight quarters. i hope your tank's temp doesn't spike when summer hits.

 

[Lukey]

Hrm didn't know this prior to now. So should I for instance be soaking mysis in this each meal to encourage colours, or what's the go? Have never heard this mentioned till now! But have seen vibrance products sold previously.

 

[rayjay]

If you buy Dan Underwoods enrichment mix from seahorsesource.com and gut load live shrimp before feeding to the seahorses, you will have all you need in the way of nutrition for your horses.
Feeding this live food once or twice a week should be sufficient, with the other feedings being the frozen mysis.
I think you will find that the colours the seahorses turn to will be determined by their surroundings, not by the enrichments you might feed them.
No one that I'm aware of has found a sure fired method of maintaining the colours seahorses start with over a long period of time.

 

[Allmost]

Hey, thanks all for your help, I recently put some red and yellow corals in the seahorse tank, and they look a bit brighter now, I got the Idea of vibrance from seahorse.com and their articles on the seahorses.

the tank is connected to my reef tank, where I have all equipment to control heat and water par. although summers are always though lol, hopefully the AC will assist me to get through it

 

[Allmost]

another question : I have some hair algae in the seahorse tank, what is the best fish to put in there to get rid of it ?

I have a lawnmover blenny, which is a champ at eating hair algae (this guy has cleaned up over 10 tanks so far ! a real worrier lol )
would it be safe to put the lawnmover in the seahorse tank for a day or two to eat the hair algae ?

on seahorse.com, they have it as a 3.

I dont like sea hares as they could give out chemicals and ink ...

 

[rayjay]

DO NOT put that lawnmower blenny in with seahorses as they are known to be aggressive towards seahorses.
Seahorses many times will only eat pieces that to them are ideal, leaving the rest for either clean up crew or to decay.
Because of this we require methods to reduce nutrients by manually vacuuming or by other means because of the uneaten food that can be trapped by rock, decor, and substrate, decomposing to feed nuisance algae.
To handle the hair algae, you need to be more diligent with tank husbandry to get better quality water so hair algae doesn't grow.
Once you get the nutrient levels down, the hair will go away.
You should also be aware that having enough nutrient to fuel nuisance algae, you also have enough breeding grounds for bad bacteria like vibriosis, and, at reefing temperatures, vibriosis will multiply much faster than if the water was in the recommended 68 to 74°F.

 

[Allmost]

thanks for the note on the lawnmover blenny ! lol

I never thought this guy would be aggressive ! and he doesnt touch frozen food or in fact any food, it just eats algae and rests LOL

the water parameters are near perfect .
NO3 is zero and at max reaches 0.2 (2 DSB and a fuge and vodka dosing)
and po4 is undetectable.

I put the algae in there myself, hoping the seahorses would hatch on them lol, wrong Idea haha,

as for feeding, I always clean up what's left behind at night, like u said, out of every 10 mysis, they eat maybe 3 of them lol

 

[rayjay]

Well, all I can say is that I've been in the salt water hobby for over 17 years and haven't found anything that can tell me I have "near perfect" water parameters.
Your test kits can't tell you of the amounts of phosphorus or ammonia that are being taken up by nuisance algae BEFORE they can be tested for.
I suspect there are also other nutrients that fuel the algae/bad bacteria also, that we don't even test for.
When foods decay, they add all kinds of trace elements to our tanks, even iodine, and in my case, I do water changes NOT to replenish elements to the water, but to LOWER the levels of those elements that excessively build up from feeding the tanks.
Some people with seahorses in reef tanks, or in tanks connected to reef tanks, find that the reef tanks themselves end up suffering somewhere down the road due to excessive nutrient added to the water column from feeding seahorses.
As for putting the algae in there yourself goes, if the water was sufficiently nutrient free, the algae would have died off.

 

[Allmost]

I could very well be wrong, but I think my import of nutrition is in fact equal to the export, of any kind, that is DSB, Skimmer, macro and micro algae growing and ZEo. Of course the algae is part of the system keeping it stable


but you are absolutly right about not being able to test for po4 and no3 since the algae will take it before we can test it. if so, then again, there are no po4 and no3 in the water

anyways, got a seahares and its doing amazing, cleaned half the tank already.