Molecular Gastronomy?

[teddscau]

Okay, so hear me out. I know a lot of people feed Nutramar Ova to their seahorses, pipefish, etc., as part of their diet. Well, it got me thinking about how people often make "caviar" using molecular gastronomy. I know that adequate nutrition can be hard with individuals who refuse frozen foods. I was wondering if you could purée some meaty foods, mix in some Selcon and other supplements, then turn them into "caviar" as a nutritious snack for seahorses and whatnot. I know pipefish are often emaciated by the time they reach their forever home, so I thought, what the heck, might as well ask you guys about it.

 

[vlangel]

Okay, so hear me out. I know a lot of people feed Nutramar Ova to their seahorses, pipefish, etc., as part of their diet. Well, it got me thinking about how people often make "caviar" using molecular gastronomy. I know that adequate nutrition can be hard with individuals who refuse frozen foods. I was wondering if you could purée some meaty foods, mix in some Selcon and other supplements, then turn them into "caviar" as a nutritious snack for seahorses and whatnot. I know pipefish are often emaciated by the time they reach their forever home, so I thought, what the heck, might as well ask you guys about it.

I doubt very much that seahorses would eat that as most greater seahorses will only eat frozen mysis shrimp. Also I would not feed my seahorses anything with selcon but there are specially formulated seahorse supplements. You might be able to gut load ghost shrimp with it and then feed the ghosties to seahorses.
Pipefish may be a bit more tolerant of trying new foods, I don't know. If you try it let us know how it went.

 

[rayjay]

Most seahorses are not likely to eat anything that doesn't have a shape that is in their natural instinct to feed on so anything pureed is just going to foul the water, ESPECIALLY if you soak it in Selco or Selcon.
Enrichments don't really soak into the food unless it's dry to begin with, like freeze dried foods, so when placing it into the water it merely washes off, again, adding fuel that feeds the nasty bacteria the seahorses are so susceptible to.

 

[teddscau]

Hmm, maybe it's Mandarins that eat roe?

 

[rayjay]

Do you have seahorses or pipefish at this time?
Just curious also as to where in Canada you are?

 

[teddscau]

Oh, not yet, just got my tank last week. I probably won't be getting my dragonface pipefish until next spring or summer. I live in the Kawartha Lakes. I'm planning on adding the dragonface pipefish directly to my 90g since I can't picture them fairing well in quarantine. They would be the first fish that I would add to my tank. After several months, I'd buy some clown gobies, Banggai cardinalfish, etc., and quarantine them before adding them to the main tank with the pipefish.

 

[rayjay]

As I have very limited experience with pipefish, I can't say for them as to which species might have a chance at something like roe or "blended" mix.
Once you have the other fish introduced though, I see no reason NOT to try something like that just to find out, as if they DON'T eat it, the others are most likely to do so.

 

[teddscau]

Wow, you joined the forum back in '99? They barely had the internet then! Man, this forum is OLD. Impressed.

Right, so I'm hoping to get the pipefish within the next month or so. It turns out my corals aren't doing so well (partly) because there aren't any fish in the tank. I'll have to really jumpstart copepod production. I put tiggers in the other week, but I'm pretty sure the amphipods ate them all :/

 

[rayjay]

Why do you think corals are not doing well without fish in the tank? There are plenty of coral only tanks that have no problem.
IME, tiggers are more of a nuisance to seahorses as they often latched onto my seahorses and it was a source of irritation for them.
Personally, I like the amphipods and mysid shrimp for seahorse tanks.
As for the age of this forum, it is actually a result of a split in factions of an OLDER forum that I was on, and this one ended up surviving and the other one gradually went away.

 

[teddscau]

Well, a bunch of members were saying that my SPS corals will do better if I have fish because they like the fish poop, then I won't have to feed them. Then again, now that I think about it, wouldn't an SPS tank do just as well with regular feedings and no fish poop?

As for tiggers, I imagine pipefish wouldn't be as annoyed by them? I can tell you the amphipod population is exploding now . A group of them have taken up residence on my sun coral. Unfortunately I don't have any mysis shrimp in my tank. Next time I go to a saltwater store I'll ask the folks there if they could scoop some mysis shrimp out of their tanks so I could put them in mine.

So, you'd recommend just sticking to corals and inverts until my microfauna population is well established? Because I would like to just add the pipefish directly to my tank without quarantining them, because again, I don't think they'd do well in quarantine.

 

[rayjay]

Because my pipefish experience is very limited and was many years ago, I hesitate to make any recommendations on them.
I know that even the heaviest pod populated tanks can be decimated in VERY short order with just one pair of seahorses. (other than pod species in there that they might not choose to eat)

 

[Rispa]

If you're going to try to see if they will eat your blend I suggest mixing the blend with live food, so they might accidentally eat it.