I doubt H Kuda in Canada is CB. Kuda in my city has the lowest price (around $49) comparing to other species, except those WC ones that only eat live food. In South East Asia, seahorse farmers raise large quantity of net-pen kuda. Those seahorses eat pods and shrimps in the ocean. After they reach a certain size, farmers feed them frozen food. A small numbers of them eat. Those are then sent to our aquarium as "tank raised seahorses". Those don't eat frozen food will starve to death and then sold to traditional chinese medicine stores. They are cheap because there is not actually any big cost for raising them. I have been trying very hard to breed seahorses. It is just very very "time-consuming" and "costly".
There was a well-known seahorse breeder "Drace Marine Aquaculture" in USA. The owner Jorge closed the business in Oct 2007. His business was actually making money. The reason why he closed that business is because he had no time for his family! After he closed the business, all other breeders ran out of their H Erectus since then.
Breeding seahorses in Canada is also costly. There is no LIVE brine shrimps or feeder shrimps suppliers in Canada. Seahorse juveniles have to eat live brine shrimp, amphipods, or feeder shrimps when they grow too big to take baby BS but not yet trained to take frozen food. I always have to order my BS from FL. The shipping is 3 times more expensive than the product itself! Also brine shrimp eggs are lot more expensive than those sold in USA. Due to this reason, there is hardly anyone breeding seahorses in Canada. Even they do, the CB seahorse is much more expensive than those bred and sold in USA.
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