Dear Jeff:
It’s very difficult to say how long it may take for those pimplelike lesions to clear up completely. Are you treating her with antibiotics in a hospital tank, sir? If so, I would complete the regimen of antibiotics (most antibiotics require at least a five day treatment; others specify a 7-10 day treatment regimen), and continue to carefully administer the topical treatments.
Once the regimen of antibiotics has been completed, Jeff, it should be safe to return her to the main tank. You can continue to treat her topically once she is back in the seahorse tank, if necessary, and if the outward signs of the infection have not disappeared by then, you can treat her with antibiotics in the main tank via gutloaded live shrimp as well.
She may be off her feed due to the stress of the daily treatments or because of her strange surroundings, so hopefully she will resume feeding on the frozen Mysis when she is back in the main tank where she is comfortable in the familiar surroundings. But it’s very important to keep her eating in the meantime in order to keep our strength up, Jeff. She may well be grazing on some pods in your hospital tank, but it might be a good idea for you to round up some live foods to tempt her with just to be sure.
The Hawaiian volcano shrimp(Halocaridina rubra) are hard for seahorses to resist and the live feeder shrimp from Seawater Express would also be perfect for this. They provide bite-sized white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) in batches of anywhere from 50 to 1000 each. They are hardy, easy-to-keep and disease free. I recommend getting the smallest of the "Snicking Shrimp" they offer for this purpose:
Seawater Express Inc.
Organic Shrimp Farm / Hatchery
<<http://www.seawaterexpress.com/>>
Or the live Mysis from Sachs Systems Aquaculture would also be a good choice. You can obtain 200 live Mysidopsis bahia for $35 from Sachs and your seahorses will love them:
<http://www.aquaculturestore.com/swinverts.html>
it sounds like you’re doing a wonderful job with the tropical treatments and that you have managed to halt the progression of the infection and kept it from spreading inward and eroding the tissue of her snout. Keep up the good work, Jeff.
Congratulations on your new brood of Sunbursts, sir! I know these aren’t the best circumstances to be dealing with another brood of babies, but if all goes well you will have many healthy broods to come.
Best of luck resolving your female’s snout problem once and for all, Jeff!
Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna
Ocean Rider, Inc. is an Organic Hawaiian-Based Seahorse Aqua-Farm & Aquarium that Follows Strict Good Farming Practices in Raising Seahorses and Other Aquatic Life.
