Feeding seahorses

[SooperD]

Anyone have advice on feeding seahorses? I know they like to be spot fed but would like to know your personal experiences. Frequency? Variety? Thanks

 

[andylee]

If not captive bred, then the only option will be live food, not brine shrimp. What do you have; what is the setup; have you seen them eat. Unfortunately, most wild-caught never wean to frozen and slowly starve.

 

[SooperD]

Thanks andylee,

I have a 60 gallon cube that is cycling now. Haven't added seahorses yet but plan in getting captive bred.

Do they really need to be fed twice daily?

 

[Geraud]

What species are you going to have?

 

[SooperD]

I found a good supplier of erectus, but am open to suggestions

 

[Geraud]

I am keeping dwarves myself (H. zosterae), they need to be fed enriched brine shrimp. It is a chore initially, but you get used to it.

As for H. erectus, as far as I know they can accept frozen foods. Of course babies will require *enriched* bbs.

A good source of information is seahorse.org for all the pesky details regarding the species you are interested in.

Good luck in your endeavor, those are truly fascinating creatures!

On a side note, I have both captive bred and wild caught specimen: no problems at all in either case.

 

[SooperD]

Thanks Geraud, glad you are having success. Do you spot feed them?

 

[Geraud]

What I do is use a sieve. I gather the bbs from the soda bottles I use to grow and enrich them in, then drop then in the sieve (using a turkey baster). Clean that under tap water, remove as much as that water as possible, then dump into the aquarium. The aquarium is low flow, so as a result the seahorses have no problems catching the bbs when they swim by. I do not believe that I have some second generation babies yet (I acquired the adults in March), but they are growing fast.

I have a made a (crappy) video of their mating dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeYhN-llRpI

The "snow" you see floating around are bbs. You can see the big female towards the center eating them as they pass next to her.

Note that the tank contains only them and a bunch of sexy shrimps.

 

[SooperD]

Ok got it. Glad it is working out. H. Erectus need larger food so mysis shrimp are recommended. The article on seahorse.org is helpful too. Thanks and cool video!