Re:Ok, here we go… awaiting arrival

Dear Christine:

Thanks for the update! It’s great to hear that both of the new arrivals are eating now. That’s an excellent indication that they will be just fine and are already starting to feel at home.

That was a very clever method you have devised for delivering the red feeder shrimp to the seahorses while they are hitched high up in the water column! I know a great many seahorse keepers who find a turkey baster to be indispensable for target feeding seahorses with frozen Mysis, but your technique is the perfect way to tempt them with live food under the circumstances.

As an added benefit, now that they are already used to feeding from the turkey baster, I am confident that you’ll soon have them taking the frozen Mysis right from the tip of the baster as well. I don’t think they’ll discriminated all between the live feeder shrimp moving right down the barrel of the baster or a lifelike frozen mysids shrimp moving down the barrel of the feeder. It sounds to me like you’ll have them trained back onto a staple diet of frozen Mysis before you know it, Christine.

The way things are going, your backup plan to order additional red feeder shrimp ASAP next Monday or Tuesday if necessary sounds perfectly sensible. I’m betting you won’t be needing them at all and that you’ll have your Ocean Riders eating right out of your hand very quickly. (For a hungry seahorse, it’s one short step from taking shrimp from the tip of a baster to accepting frozen Mysis from right your fingertips.)

Don’t feel too bad about losing some of the red feeder shrimp, Christine. It sounds like they’ve already served their purpose and I should have made sure to include the acclimation instructions for the shrimp along with the proper procedure for acclimating your seahorses in my post to you on the day they were due to arrive.

Best of luck with your new seahorses, Christine!

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna