Zots

[twiggyb]

Seahorse source recommends a small herd for 2 to 5 gallons, but what is a herd considered? Also, how many would I get for a 12 gallon tank? I know they need live BBS to survive, just want to know about how many. It'll be a little while before I decide to get them as I need to use the 12g to train a filefish to eat first.

 

[rayjay]

Personally, I wouldn't use a 12g for dwarfs as it would require too much live food to give the density of food required to properly feed the dwarfs.
I put 20 in a 5g and it's not anywhere near capacity with that number in it.
In the meantime you can practice up on decapping, hatching, growing out and enrichening bbs. Dwarfs have a short life span that can be maximized by proper enrichment of the brine.
My adults prefer ongrown enriched brine up to 1/3 the size of adult brine, but the dwarf fry need the smaller enriched nauplii.

 

[twiggyb]

Hmmm, might be a great idea for this tank then. If they're that small they might wander off into the tunnels and never be seen again. Here's a pic of what the tank looks like minus the dead brain on the right. And all the frags on the sand.

It used to be my mantis tank until she passed away a couple of weeks ago. I started to hatch some brine shrimp a few days ago and so far so good. I'm on my third bath and I'm going to attempt to grow them out bigger. Any good reads on how to do this? I've been googling and reading things here and there, but not sure which set up to use.

 

[rayjay]

If I was going to put dwarfs in a tank that size I'd probably put at least 50 in it.
As for brine shrimp, growing them out in meaningful numbers can be labour intensive unless you are in a climate where you can grow them in an outdoor pond. It takes many people some time to get "the touch" to be successful repeatedly using high density growing.
I grow them on a large scale but you could tailor your own needs from what I do. Growing Artemia to Adult
A lot of dwarf keepers prefer to start with a sterile tank that hasn't had livestock in it.
I boiled all the rock I use in mine, and I only use artificial decor.

 

[Virtuoso]

Personally, I wouldn't use a 12g for dwarfs as it would require too much live food to give the density of food required to properly feed the dwarfs.
I put 20 in a 5g and it's not anywhere near capacity with that number in it.
In the meantime you can practice up on decapping, hatching, growing out and enrichening bbs. Dwarfs have a short life span that can be maximized by proper enrichment of the brine.
My adults prefer ongrown enriched brine up to 1/3 the size of adult brine, but the dwarf fry need the smaller enriched nauplii.

Do you have to enrich baby brine shrimp? I thought as long as you fed them to the fish right as they hatch you were okay.

 

[cynster]

The newly hatched brine shrimp aren't actual marine life so they are missing some key nutrients to keep the dwarfs healthy. A lot of the available food sources are not very nutritious for them, and they won't touch frozen, so the best option is probably enriching the brine shrimp. Since you would want them to be a little bit bigger for the adults anyway, might as well. Mine aren't very enthusiastic about the newly hatched baby brine shrimp. They seem to prefer a day or two old. I'd like to grow them out even more, but as rayjay said, you have to kind of get in the swing of growing large quantities. I only have 10 and I have a 10 gallon tank and 3 enrichment containers devoted entirely to them - and I still haven't really gotten it down the way I want it.

 

[twiggyb]

Rayjay, do you have any pics of your zot tank? 50 sounds like so many for this tank, but I haven't seen any to compare the size to something. Maybe I'll just set up a little 2g or something on this here computer desk for some of these little guys I'd like to start advancing in this hobby a little more and for me that means getting into learning how to make phyto and culture bbs as well as rotifers just as soon as I make some room. Then I'll start by taking care of these guys and finally I'd like to try and breed something. My main goal in breeding is to breed my orange spot filefish. Hopefully I can get that far :lol:

 

[Virtuoso]

The newly hatched brine shrimp aren't actual marine life so they are missing some key nutrients to keep the dwarfs healthy. A lot of the available food sources are not very nutritious for them, and they won't touch frozen, so the best option is probably enriching the brine shrimp. Since you would want them to be a little bit bigger for the adults anyway, might as well. Mine aren't very enthusiastic about the newly hatched baby brine shrimp. They seem to prefer a day or two old. I'd like to grow them out even more, but as rayjay said, you have to kind of get in the swing of growing large quantities. I only have 10 and I have a 10 gallon tank and 3 enrichment containers devoted entirely to them - and I still haven't really gotten it down the way I want it.

Thank you for the detailed answer. I am mostly raising BBS for my 2 small clownfish and 1 pajama cardinal. They love it, but wanted to make sure they were getting enough nutrients and I have heard conflicting info about enriching BBS. From what I understand if you feed them within a day or so of hatching they should still provide nutrition without enrichment.

I have been thinking about setting up a seahorse tank for my girlfriend and was leading toward dwarf seahorses since I am already going to BBS route. Gives me something to think about. Thanks again.

 

[rayjay]

Do you have to enrich baby brine shrimp? I thought as long as you fed them to the fish right as they hatch you were okay.

Well over the years, people in the hobby found that lifespans were not too long, but when using enriched artemia, especially ongrown ones, the lifespan was increased. I enrich because I want as many months as possible out of them.
When brine hatch out, they don't all hatch at the same time. As soon as they hatch out, they start consuming the egg sack that contains the fatty acid nutrient. When you harvest for feeding to dwarfs, you will have varying degrees of egg sack depletion therefore varying degrees of nutrition going to the dwarfs.
In addition, fatty acid nutrients alone do not promote longevity.
By using a product like Dan's Feed from seahorsesource.com, it is a blend of many things and when you enrich the brine, you then give a better balanced nutrient profile to the dwarfs.
Unfortunately one cannot enrich newly hatched brine for about a day until they develop their digestive tracts. Then, it takes a long time for them to complete the enrichment.
So after harvesting newly hatched, you place them in new culture water and let them grow for a day until they get to the InstarII stage where they can feed. Then you enrich for two 12 hour stages with new water and enrichment for each 12 hour stage. They have a decent amount of nutrition after 12 hours, but by going 24 hours, you get a much more complete degree of nutrition.
As brine shrimp grow, it takes a bit less time to enrich for each Instar stage until as adults, the artemia can have a reasonable degree of nutrient after 4 hours, with 8 hours being optimal.
I've even converted some of my clownfish customers that buy rotifers and greenwater from me, to enriching rots and bbs for feeding their clown fry.
My dwarf tank is a 5g tank and I put 20 dwarfs in it and it's hard to find them all. I know it can handle a lot more.
There is a picture of my dwarf tank at the bottom of my seahorse page

 

[Virtuoso]

rayjay, thank you very much for the detailed explanation. Was the first I have run into that doesn't assume you already know about the process. Sorry if this was too much of a derail, but thank you!

 

[twiggyb]

Sorry if this was too much of a derail,

Not at all. I'm still learning aboot brine shrimp knowledge too. It's a new venture for me and I like to learn.

 

[twiggyb]

On my way to a dwarf seahorse tank. I plan on building it all right now and then practicing more with hatching brine shrimp. Gotta do some reading up on decapping them. I put a batch in a 6g tank with a heater and two airlines going into it, but have noticed more and more of the brine on the ground. Does this mean they're dead? I need to sit down and read some more.:reading:

 

[cynster]

I think brine normally have a lot of die off. I've tried a lot of different methods and I still get some die off in the beginning. The best luck I've had is when I put them in a still 10g tank with fresh salt water and just don't touch it or do anything with it, then turkey baste out the ones I want to feed or enrich.

 

[rayjay]

First of all, the BEST container to grow brine shrimp in will be a vessel with tapered sides all around to keep the brine AND the food in circulation all the time. A tank has too many dead spots to be an effective rearing container for dense cultures.
The closest I come to that is the inverted pop bottles that I hatch and enrich with, not perfect but they do the job.
When I put them in my rearing containers which are 26g rubbermaids, I have the containers tilted on an angle so that there is again a low point and the rigid air line rests at that point to aid in circulation.
As for stuff on the bottom, it is made up of several things.
First, when hatching out their is a lot of "debris" even if you decap the cysts first. This doesn't all go through the mesh when you are harvesting so eventually it ends up on the bottom, although a lot of it stays in suspension even if you don't have water motion.
Second, as the brine grow, each molt is something else to contaminate the water and much of it also falls to the bottom, with some staying in suspension as well.
Lastly, yes, there is some die off and the amount depends on the technique you have acquired, the quality of the cysts, and the quality of the food you feed them.

 

[twiggyb]

Here's a link to my build for the zots

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2057498

 

[twiggyb]

Is 80 too hot for dwarves?

 

[gcsoupman]

Twiggy nice looking little tank.

 

[twiggyb]

thanks, it's coming along pretty well. Just got a book in the mail all about Dwarf Seahorses.

 

[rayjay]

Is 80 too hot for dwarves?

It's not a temperature I would operate at due to increased bacterial growth possibilities.

 

[jeff@zina.com]

Is 80 too hot for dwarves?

Not for h. zosterae. In general, they do fine up to the mid-80's.

For the most part, I recommend no corals in a dwarf tank. They're found primarily in grass beds. Live grasses are great, plastic are fine. Feeding should also include copepods, live mysis (they'll usually eat frozen fine) and the like.

Newly hatched baby brine shrimp (NHBBS) are great for about 4 hours, then they start molting and both get larger and lose egg sac. By 12-24 hours, the yolk is gone and they're basically just crunchy enclosures for whatever the brine are eating. Since they will start to eat copepods, rotifers and even finely crushed flake, having a bit of this in the tank will help them carry it into the sea horses.

Personally, Dan has a great line of options for sea horse feeding and breeding, it's worth the expense to look at it. On the other hand, I don't use them. My h. zostera come from about a mile away and I'll just grab new grass beds and shake them in a bucket when I want a change of feed.

Jeff