Rescued seahorse

[Speedfreak241]

Well I have adopted a seahorse from a friend down in the keys who couldn't keep him because he knew nothing about seahorse care and couldn't get him to eat. He is wild caught so he is a lined seahorse which I believe is called Erectus. I have had him for a week and have gotten him to eat live brine shrimp. Currently I feed him a syringe full which come out to about 100-200 and he finishes them by the end of the day. Ik that brine is not very nutritional and I am working on weaning him to mysis. Any tips I should know about, this is my first seahorse and want him to have a good home. He is in a 5.5 right now with an air driven sponge filter so that the brine doesn't get sucked up.

 

[BlueCat1949]

This is a tough one for a several reasons. Your first priority is to get the seahorse to eat. Brine shrimp alone won't sustain him even if you enhance it with additives. Try mixing frozen mysis with the BS, sometimes they will snick it by mistake and get the hang of it. Squirt it in front of him so it is moving. If you have access to live SW shrimp it can make all the difference in keeping the seahorse alive.

The 5.5 gallon is way too small so you will have to keep on top of water quality by doing very frequent water changes, every day if you can.

This will not be easy and I know from experience that saving a wild caught seahorse can be very difficult. The horse probably has a better chance with you than your friend so I think you did the right thing.

Good luck

 

[Speedfreak241]

Right now he is eating like a pig on the brine, 100-200 a day. He loves to wait for them to drift into the corner then pushes them into the glass and eats them, he is really intelligent and seems like he has learned the flow of the tank and how to catch them. I have put mysis in there but I haven't seen him eat it yet. I will try again tomorrow as the only time I am able to watch him eat is in the morning.
My only problem is the mysis I have is bigger than his head would this be ok?


Picture of how he sits in the corner waiting.

 

[pfan151]

Try some hikari mysis. They are small. Live salt water shrimp are the way to go until it will eat frozen. Your seahorse looks pretty small so try to get small ones. The place I get them from charges $.20 each

 

[vlangel]

You can also gut load the live brine shrimp with Dan's Feed to add more nutritional value until you get it to eat some frozen mysis. The Dan's Feed is good to gut the salt water shrimp too. You can order Dan's Feed from Seahorse Source.

 

[Speedfreak241]

Quick update, the seahorse is still only eating live brine and won't touch the frozen mysis. I will have to get the pe type and try that. Until then he gets at ton of brine shrimp (enough to make the entire 5.5 full).

 

[Speedfreak241]

Well thought I'd end this post. I took the seahorse into my lfs. He would only eat live brine the entire time I had him but I kept the tank swarming with them so he could constantly eat. Even with many attempts to ween him onto frozen he refused. The shrimp had to be moving or he would just watch it float by. He ended up growing a lot and had a slight coloration change. He was also extremely Hardy because I left for a few weeks and would only come back for the weekend and didn't realize that they had been filling the tank with salt not rodi. When I finally tested the water it was reading 1.040 or higher.