Reply To: Diet enrichment while preventing Fatty Liver Disease

Dear munmachi:

Sure, and as long as your ponies eat all three brands readily, alternating between Hikari, Ocean Nutrition, and San Francisco Bay Brand Frozen Mysis should work well.

Likewise, the supplements you mentioned (Selcon, Paracoccus power, and Spirulina) are also good choices for fortifying frozen Mysis and I don’t foresee any problems with any of those particular supplements…

As for the softgel capsules containing lutein and zeaxanthin, I think you can certainly try opening the softgel caps, squeezing out the contents, and applying a bit of it to frozen Mysis. It will all depend on whether or not seahorses will eat the frozen Mysis after you have applied some of the gel with lutein and zeaxanthin. There’s a chance that the seahorses will not like the taste of the lutein and zeaxanthin, or that the traces of safflower or sunflower oil will prove to be unpalatable to your ponies, causing them to refuse the Mysis. (To my knowledge, I don’t think that safflower oil or sunflower oil would necessarily be harmful to the seahorses, but those are things they do not normally ingest, and the ponies may simply not want to swallow it; I don’t know…)

The best way to prevent fatty liver disease is to fast all of the seahorses one day a week. As an alternative, you can indeed provide unenriched adult brine shrimp on your fasting days, since they are just empty calories when they have not been fortified.

However, if you go ahead and fortify the adult brine shrimp with Spirulina, that will increase its nutritional value, and therefore defeat your purpose, leaving your seahorses at risk for hepatic lipidosis. All things considered, it is usually simplest to fast your ponies for one day a week, especially if you don’t have a good source that can consistently provide you with clean, healthy adult brine shrimp.

Best wishes with all your fishes!

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support