Sick Seahorse. Need Advice!

Spartanman22

Spartanman22

New member
I have a 20 gallon that I have dedicated to seahorses. I have had the tank set up for maybe 3 to 4 weeks, but I used water from my 75 reef and sand and rock from there as well, so I did not experience much of a cycle. I have had the tank with two small banded pipefish for about 2 weeks which brings me to my next question. What do you guys feed your pipefish. I have tried everything, I have fed frozen brine, frozen blood worms, frozen tubifex, and frozen daphnia, and even live brine but they won't eat anything. The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is mysis and while it may work I am of the opinion that if they won't eat brine then they won't eat mysis. Am I correct or are the two entirely different?

For my second question I just added two small sea horses. They both imediatly ate and were doing fine. I come back an hour later to find one face first in the sand, breathing heavily, and cloudy eyes. The other seahorse is perfectly fine, swimming all over the place. What could have gone wrong, and what can I do to help them. I just did a 3 gallon water change before acclimating the seahorses. Both the seahorses were also captive bred.

Unfortunatly I don't have any test results because I am out of test kits, but the inhabitants of this tank have been doing fine for weeks prior to the seahorses and all the water comes from a very healthy and established reef, so unless I'm mistaken the water should be in the accepted peramiters.

The tank they are in has 2 koralia #1's, but I only keep one on with a hob filter and a cheapy seaclone skimmer.
 
i'm gonna say that the sick seahorse got something from your tank since there are pipefish in there and u used water, sand, and rock from a reef tank, which has who knows what in it. Are they wc or cb seahorses?? cb seahorses don't have the immunity that wc ones have to many bacteria. So in mixing them with the pipefish you probably exposed them to bacteria that they cannot fight off even though the pipes seem healthy. Also there could be a number of bad critters in that water, sand, or rock from the reef tank that is no good for the horses. also wut is the water temp, they r even more likely to fall ill in temps over 74 degrees. horses should really be kept by themselves in a tank started from scratch or left fallow for a while if using water from somewhere else, this way you know that there isn't tons of bad stuff living in it.
 
The seahorses were erectus and the sick one passed on but the healthy is still fine I keep the temperature around 74-75 degrees and they are cb. I didn't know using water and sand and rock from my current tank would be a problem in this application. I figured it would help but now I know. But about the pipefish's diet does anyone have an answer to that because they still won't eat anything. Not even live brine. The only thing I havn't tried is mysis but I am of the opinion that if they wont eat brine they wont eat mysis unless I am wrong and they are entirely different. The only thing I have seen them eat is something that was off the sand but i couldn't see what it was. They always go for the food but at the last second back away.
 
Live mysis are very different from live brine shrimp. Try live mysis, live copepods, and frozen cyclopeeze.
 
i second the vote for the frozen cyclopeeze, the small size and color might be just wut they need.
 
ok well I don't have any stores around here that sell live foods so that isn't much off an option. One of the pipefish died, im guessing from lack of food but one is still going strong. I tried frozen mysis but still nothing, so i will look at my lfs for cyclopleeze. But i have heard that soaking foods in garlic helps get finicky eaters to eat, is this true?
 
well i know i can order them online i just didnt think they would get here in time. Ok now i have a question my tank did accomidate two seahorses. The first one died for some unkown reason and the second one, that was doing fine was killed by two hermit crabs that were with them. so know i have no seahorses so i figured now would be a good time to make sure my tank is perfect before adding seahoreses again. the questions i have are whether or not to add a skimmer, and what type of hermits are seahorse safe the ones that killed my seahorse are not going to be around much longer.
 
Personally, I wouldn't have any hermits in any of my tanks.
I don't think the hermits killed the erectus though. They would move in on dead or dying matter.
Using water/rock/sand from a tank with other inhabitants automatically moves all the pathogens from the one tank into the other. Seahorses are not resilient enough to handle most pathogens from reef tanks. Also, most experienced seahorse keepers would recommend temps be kept 72 and below to lessen the chances of bacterial infestation.
As for the pipefish, I have 3 banded pipefish, Doryrhamphus pessuliferus, which I'm told is the hardest of the three types of banded pipefish to get on a feeding regime.
When I couldn't get mine to eat, I put a Hagen power head with a quick filter attachment on it, into my frag tank. Each day, I remove the quickfilter and pick off the pod life that has gathered on the filter. Because the pipefish are very small, only the smallest are of any immediate value, but I put in all that I can pick off the filter so they can populate the rocks and produce young that will be appropriately sized.
I also feed live rotifers and two of the three are starting to pick up on that. The same two are also starting to pick something out of the cyclopeeze, (too small to identify) but don't touch most of it. At least that's a start.
One has started to pick at mysis, which being too large, he hacks off a piece and spends a minute getting the piece down.
So far that's not all that great but at least it's a start.
 
I would not recommend mixing seahorses with pipefish, especially since you had a problem when mixing before. If you want seahorses, I would set up a separate tank for them. The risk of bacterial infection is too great, not to mention parasitic issues; and since you had illness previously when you tried it, the odds are even less in your favor.
 
Ok now that my tank is empty except the 3 hermits I figured now would be a good idea to reconsider my setup and how i want to go about this. I am undesided as to whether or not to run a sump or not. The tank is only a 20 gallon so it would be a smallsump that just drains into the fuge and then a return section. Is it worth it. Does it make that much of a difference? Also i am very confused about the whole skimmer issue. I have heard that they are bad and have also heard that that is just opinion. Should i run a skimmer or not. I don't plan on even considering another pair of seahorses until early or mid december. That would put the tank at about 2 months old. Also should i be keeping live cultures of anyything. I plan to buy captive bred so should i worry with live foods since i would by captive bred seahorses that eat frozen food.
 
You are always taking a risk mixing syngnathid species. My advice would be if you decided to do this again, to qt the pipes and horses in separate qt tanks and when they are eating and living okay in qt, start gradually mixing some water from both tanks to gradually acclimate them to the whatever the others may be carrying. Not a foolproof method but you would have the best chance of success this way. Also try to keep the tank temps around 68-70 deg f to discourage any nasties from getting out of control.
 
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