Live Rock with dwarf seahorses :S

Anyone who in the past able to get dwarfs to eat frozen found out that it didn't last for long and if they didn't get the dwarfs back onto live again in time, they lost the dwarfs.
 
Short term on a mono diet of NHBBS your dwarfs will do ok. But long term a mono diet is not a balanced diet and you will see a downturn in the numbers of births and health related issues. If you do not want to do a daily hatch, you can always set some aside and enrich them with live microalgae, paste or freeze dry. Rayjay can really help you on the subject of feeding & artemia care.

DanU wrote this and I find that it is right on the money.

It is very difficult to keep H. zosterae long term. Nutrition is important but it is the contaminants in the nutrition that most folks don't take into consideration.

For a very long time, most folks fed newly hatched artemia and most folks that use that have difficulty getting past 3 months. Some would but it was a minority. Now that folks are enriching, that particular issue is resolved. Folks need to make sure that what ever enrichment they are using is high in DHA and has a decent vitamin C component to it. Artemia retroconverts DHA to EPA rather rapidly so unless the enrichment is very high in DHA, that component is essentially missing from the diet. Vitamin C is needed for reproduction and the immune system.

Reduction of bacterial loads is often overlooked or ignored. Artemia hatching can be a source and lack of nutrient removal only promotes bacterial growth in the tank. It is in essence like a perpetual fry tank. The issues that apply to raising fry apply to managing a H. zosterae system.

I am coming up on the 2 year anniversary of my Live Mysids with Dwarfs experiment. Hugely successful. So much so I have to wholesale out 100 to 200 each month as production is well above the retail demand. I still have some of the original zosterae I started with which were adults when I added them. I attribute the success to the application of the techniques to handle what is mentioned above.



If you look at restaurant supply companies. It might give you some ideas in culture containers. (Thanks for the info Cheryl.)

Kind Regards,

Tim
 
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RayJay - if I were feeding both, like frozen in the mornings, live in the evenings, do you think that they may still eventually reject live food - I certainly don't want to stop providing live food, but be able to provide frozen in addition.

Tim - Thank you for the information - so I need to be sure I am enriching the brine shrimp in high levels of DHA and vitamin C?

Do you all have any recommended sources of these enrichment products? I definitely want to be sure the seahorses are getting the nutrition they need.

EDIT: Just out of interest and curiosity about the frozen food, by the way. If I can enrich and keep the brine shrimp longer, then I don't need frozen, but I'd still like to know if I tried some experiments with frozen foods that as long as I fed live alongside they wouldn't reject the live.

EDIT: I wonder if that is the same Dan from Seahorse Source - they had some products with high DHA and vitamins and proteins called "Dan's Feed". I don't have a lot of success keeping brine shrimp alive for a long time, but it said best results are 12 hours - and that's not a problem for me. It's just growing them to adult size.. but I've only tried once. Maybe with practice I can get better.
 
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I've never heard of dwarfs rejecting live food unless there is something wrong with them and they just don't eat anything.
Feeding frozen will likely be a failure anyway, and, it leads to other problems as in water quality because any uneaten food that gets trapped and unseen can be a bad bacteria factory.
While there are many forms of DHA enrichment, as in DHA Selco or Algamac 3050, my preferred method is via Dan's Feed which includes the 3050 but has many other enhancements as well. Dan has designed this specifically for seahorses but I know of at least one person using it for clownfish fry.
Indeed, the "BOLD" in Tim's last post was written by Dan Underwood of seahorsesource.com, creator of Dans Feed.
 
Then I'm not going to bother with the frozen I don't think - What about copepods? Are they usually raised in the tank with the seahorses or are they added as adults once they grow?

EDIT: lol great minds - I was thinking that too - is there a specific type that is easy to grow/doesn't cause a lot of waste in the tank?
 
Tigriopus californicus is very simple to culture in a separate container. They don't need light, air, or heat. Just food every once in awhile and a cool area. You can strain them out as needed. I also think they may store DHA unlike brine, but I am not 100% on that.

I have heard reports that " Tangerine" may be a hands off culture. But I have no experience with them yet. They may also be on the large size I am not so sure.
 
I was just about to buy dwarves. Glad I saw this thread. Do you think I can keep mysids in the seahorse tank as secondary food source? I am going to feed them enriched bbs... But you know, as a backup?
 
Would copepods not be another healthier option? Some are much simpler to raise than brine in some respects.

Copepods are great and part of their diet. The only problem is the space needed for their production, they do not reproduce fast enough for daily use. The OP stated he lives in a apartment. I have the same problem, I just don't have the space to raise enough. At best I can do is a weekly feeding of my A. tonsa & M. salnia. But then again, I only culture them in 6 liter vases.

Tim
 
I was just about to buy dwarves. Glad I saw this thread. Do you think I can keep mysids in the seahorse tank as secondary food source? I am going to feed them enriched bbs... But you know, as a backup?


You will find that you might need to add a little more enriched artemia to the tank with mysis in there. The mysis does a great job cleaning up the left over artemia and in turn they will make a great source of food for the dwarfs.
 
I was just about to buy dwarves. Glad I saw this thread. Do you think I can keep mysids in the seahorse tank as secondary food source? I am going to feed them enriched bbs... But you know, as a backup?


If you haven't consider it yet, please buy true captive breds ones over the wild caught one. You will save yourself a lot of grief and added expense.
 
most definitely. seahorsesource all the way :D and btw.. i have sexy shrimps in the tank. do these eat mysis too? they have larvae regularly but i think they are too big for dsh consumption..
 
most definitely. seahorsesource all the way :D and btw.. i have sexy shrimps in the tank. do these eat mysis too? they have larvae regularly but i think they are too big for dsh consumption..

The Sexy makes a great CUC by eating the dead mysis and leftover artemia. The dwarfs can handle their young without a problem.
 
Then I'm not going to bother with the frozen I don't think - What about copepods? Are they usually raised in the tank with the seahorses or are they added as adults once they grow?

EDIT: lol great minds - I was thinking that too - is there a specific type that is easy to grow/doesn't cause a lot of waste in the tank?

Both ways.

The A. tonsa & M. salina you culture in a seperate tank and add them to the dwarf tank. You raise the them on microalgae like Tetra or Iso.

The Tisbe can be done the same way, just feed them a little bit of crushed flake food and mysis. The added bonus is they will reproduce in your dwarf tank.

I take a lot of risk with what I keep in with my dwarfs. However I will not use gammarus or Tigriopus californicus as a food source for them.

Tim
 
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I take a lot of risk with what I keep in with my dwarfs. However I will not use gammarus or Tigriopus californicus as a food source for them.

Tim

I have heard the T. californicus can cause problems in some fish, but never experienced it first hand. I am assuming the risk your talking about is the pods getting stuck in throats or eating their way out of stomachs? Maybe I was just lucky that it never happened to me.
 
The problem I had with them was the tiggers attaching themselves to the dwarfs and stressing the seahorses. I also had disappearing dwarf fry I attribute to the tiggers.
My adult standard seahorses have no big problem with them but are somewhat irritated by them nonetheless.
The biggest advantage for using artemia is that so many can be hatched and used or grown much faster than any pods.
It takes a heck of a large culture set up to produce enough copepods for dwarfs even, let alone larger seahorses. With the right copepods though, it is a welcome addition to the nutrient profile for the seahorses, dwarf or standard.
 
ah ok - thanks for all the info about the copepods... now onto something else:

What do you all use for your cleaning crew? Preferably I would like to stay away from snails because I want to be able to use panacur if I spot a hydroid outbreak and not kill the snails. I have peppermint shrimp now, but I can trade them if there is a better cleanup crew that will not be affected by the possibly panacur.

Also - I am "feeding" the tank brine shrimp now (I love my new hatchery!! It is -so- hands off and it works great now!) to both keep the ammonia load high on the tank so when the dwarfs and brine are introduced, the tank can handle them, but also to discover any critters that may be lurking in my live rock and be able to panacur them. After a treatment of panacur and the hydroids have seemed to have disappeared, how long should I wait before adding snails? I remember someone saying it took 2 years to kill the hydroids? Or is that 2 years before it is safe to add snails?
 
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