Seahorse pics

[ltay]

Thanks for all your replies.

I believe they are called black kudas. (By the way, Kuda in Malay means horse.. hmm..)..not sure of the scientific name.
They are eating brines and frozen fresh cylopees.
I have lots of mysis shrimp and various pods species in the seahorse tank, sump and overflow. During the night it's about 30 of them swimming like crazy at the bottom of the seahorse tank and hunt for brines in the water.
I have a self-feed brine hatcher installed at the back of the tank to feed it..
I also have banded pipes and a small multi-colored with blue stripes pipefish. I will try to catch some pics when they come out to feed But normally they would be out after lights out.

I also started feeding rotifers and home made phytos. DT is just way too expensive...

I actually set my digital camera to 'burst 3' exposure to snap 3 at the same time. The camera would then select the best exposure with the aperture and shutter. I then pick the best picture and delete the rest of the two. This way I am certain that I don't loose a good angle when a fish/critter passes by.

[EmilyB]

Awesome Itay

[Beverly]

Itay,

There is a species of seahorse called H. kuda, so that is probably what they are. From how you describe feeding them, I suspect they are wild caught (WC).

Brine shrimp are a poor source of nutrition and should not be considered a long term food source for your new kudas. Rotifers are very, very small and may be overlooked by your kudas. Even though there may be lots of pods in the tank, your SHs will soon eat them, especially kudas which grow pretty large, maybe 8" or longer at full adult size.

Rotifers are perfect food for kuda fry, though, which need to be raised separately from the adults in nursery tanks. Interestingly, kudas which are large, produce hundreds of very tiny fry. The H. whitei that I keep are small (4" adult length) and produce smaller broods of quite large fry.

The sooner you get your SHs eating frozen the better. PE mysis, available from J&L and a few select lfs, are the best nutritionally for SHs of all species except for dwarves with an adult length of only about an inch, which eat only newly hatched brine.

Training your kuda to eat from a feeding station will cut down on overfeeding. Here is a site I put together on various feeding stations and training methods:

http://www.lostmymarblz.com/hh-feeding-stations.htm

HTH.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Beverly is right, get them eating frozen as soon as you can. In the mean time try to enrich your brine shrimp as much as you can. Selcon etc. if they are live brine feed them lots of green water etc.
I've had a few Kuda's and they eat alot, good luck, I love seahorses but I'm not going to get more I don't think.

Doug

[ltay]

Thanks Beverly & BCOrchidGuy,

I've forgotten I have enriched my brine with phytos and selcon.. lots of it before I dump them into a brine sifter and put into the auto-feeder. They are eating well. I will try your suggestions.

[ltay]

It's hard to feed them with PE Frozen Mysis.... even with garlic extreme. They shy away.

[Beverly]

Itay,

WC SHs are hard to train, that's why you have to do some long term hands-on training. Read this feeding station page, especially the "Training Seahorses to Eat from Feeding Station" near the bottom of the page:

http://www.lostmymarblz.com/hh-feeders-rd-barbouri.htm

HTH.

[EmilyB]

Originally Posted by ltay

It's hard to feed them with PE Frozen Mysis.... even with garlic extreme. They shy away.

My pipefish shied away from it in the beginning as well, as the shrimp are so large for them. I started them with the very small SW mysis, I think Hikari, then gradually introduced the PE.

[BCOrchidGuy]

maybe I can save you some trouble and tell you what DID NOT work for me. I had my seahorses in my refugium with a fair amount of live rock, I built up the live rock so it was in the middle of the tank leaving room all the way around the tank for water flow. I put in 2 really small and 2 small power heads to slowly keep the water circulating. I had one in each corner pushing the water slowly around. My thought process was that when I put in the mysis it would slowly tumble along the bottom and with any luck keep going until the seahorses ate it up. Well they'd follow it, they'd move right up to it, they'd reach out just like they were going to Snick it, and then they'd go back to their hitches. I tried Hikari, and PE, I tried brine shrimp, etc nothing worked. I never did get any of my horses to eat frozen.

Doug

[Beverly]

Doug, were your SHs WC or CB? Whichever they were, how heartbreaking to watch them starve to death