Seahorse Club
Aquarium & Livestock

Feed Ezy Frozen Mysis

Seahorse Club
Aquarium & Livestock

Feed Ezy Frozen Mysis

Seahorse Club
Aquarium & Livestock

Feed Ezy Frozen Mysis

Seahorse Club
Aquarium & Livestock

Feed Ezy Frozen Mysis

Seahorse Club
Aquarium & Livestock

Feed Ezy Frozen Mysis

Seahorse Club
Aquarium & Livestock

Feed Ezy Frozen Mysis

Dwarfs/Pixies?

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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  • #905

    I was going to get a pair of pixies and i wanted to know if a 1 or 2g would sufice. I want to get a pair. Will adults eat frozen BBS? Instead of a sponge filter(i dont want one because they make a VERY annoying sound) i was thinking about getting an Azoo palm filter(a small power filter) if i put netting around it and turned it on low.Also where can i get neomycin, i lost 4 seahorses to it and the last one died 2 monthes ago, and i want seahorses again but in a smaller set up.tell me how to keep them alive. i have seen them in my LFS and they are fasinating.

    Thanks,Nigel

    When will OR sell them again??:dry:

    Post edited by: nigelseahorse, at: 2006/08/23 18:19

    #2796
    Pete Giwojna
    Guest

    Dear Nigel:

    Yes, sir, a one or two gallon aquarium would be plenty spacious enough for a pair of dwarf seahorses. The suggested stocking density for Pixies or dwarf seahorses (Hippocampus zosterae) is two pairs per gallon, which is a very conservative figure, so a two-gallon aquarium can easily house four pairs of pixies or eight adults.

    No, sir, you cannot count on adult Pixies or doors seahorses to eat frozen baby brine shrimp or any other frozen foods consistently. Dwarf seahorses are pretty lazy hunters. They like to anchor their tails to a convenient hitching post and wait for their food to come to them, rather than chasing after potential prey. In most cases, attempting to get them to eat frozen food just results in polluting your aquarium.

    It can sometimes be done with lots of time, patience, and perseverance, and it isn’t really as difficult as most folks imagine to train adult dwarves to eat frozen foods IF you have a role model to teach them. Zulus, tubers, barbs, young erectus, etc. all make great teachers, and most adult zosterae will learn to take bits of frozen mysis or sometimes the frozen form of Cyclop-eeze readily enough with such role models to show them the way. But some dwarves just don’t get it and never learn to eat frozen fodder and, in my opinion, it’s just not worth the effort of trying to train any of them.

    Why? Because training adults to eat frozen food by no means frees the dwarf seahorse keeper from the need to hatch out huge amounts of baby brine shrimp every single day. Think about it. Anybody who keeps any amount of dwarf seahorses for any length of time always has zosterae fry on his hands. The fry need copious amounts of newly hatched Artemia nauplii daily anyway, so it’s simply easier and more efficient to hatch out enough bbs for the adults at the same time. Many hobbyists prefer to raise dwarf fry in the same tank as their parents, so maintaining an adequate feeding density of Artemia nauplii for the newborns automatically assures that the adults are equally well fed. For me, there’s just no percentage in spending a lot of time and effort trying to train adults to eat frozen food, and running the risk that the uneaten frozen food will degrade your water quality, when I still have to keep a battery of brine shrimp hatcheries cranked up full blast for the babies anyway.

    In my experience, Artemia nauplii are the best food for Hippocampus zosterae in any case. Either 1st-instar nauplii from decapsulated cysts, fed to the seahorses immediately after hatching while the nauplii’s yolk sacs are virtually intact, or 2nd-instar nauplii that have been enriched, make a highly nutritious diet that meets all the dwarf seahorse’s requirements.

    Wow, you must of had a clunky old air pump or something if you’re sponge filter was too noisy for you, since they have no moving parts. Sometimes the continual bubbling can be annoying, but I actually find it rather soothing. It’s difficult to say whether the alternative filtration system you are contemplating would be practical for such a small aquarium.

    If you can mount an Azoo palm filter on a 1-2 gallon aquarium and then screen off the intake sufficiently to prevent it from sucking up the newly hatched brine shrimp (Artemia nauplii) the dwarf seahorses require on a daily basis, then that could be a workable alternative. But you would have to use very fine netting — the type used on a brine shrimp net, for example — or perhaps use a sponge prefilter on the intake instead. In the end, I suppose it will depend on how low you can adjust the output from the filter. Before you try that set up, though, Nigel, please contact me off list at the following e-mail address and I will send you lots of additional information on dwarf seahorses that discusses several other methods for filtering such an aquarium: [email protected]

    Don’t make your final decision on what type of filtration is best for your 1-2 gallon aquarium until you’ve looked over the additional material I will send you. It will tell you everything you need to know about the care and keeping of dwarf seahorses.

    In the meantime, there have been a couple of other discussions on the Ocean Rider Club message board regarding dwarf seahorses that you might also find to be of interest, so please check out the following links when you have a chance, Nigel:

    Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:Setting up my very firs
    http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,144/func,view/catid,2/id,1394/#1394

    Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:Dwarfs – Ocean Rider Cl
    http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,1000/#1000

    Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:pixies – Ocean Rider Cl
    http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,1216/#1216

    And don’t forget to pick up a copy of Alisa Abbott’s guidebook (Complete Guide to Dwarf Seahorses in the Aquarium, 2003, 144 pages). That’s one book every Pixie owner and dwarf seahorse keeper should have on hand. I proofed Alisa’s dwarf seahorse book for TFH publications and wrote the preface for it, so I’m quite familiar with her guide, and I highly recommend it.

    You can obtain a wide range of medications decide for aquarium use, including neomycin sulfate, from National Fish Pharmaceuticals at the following URL:

    Click here: Fish Medications
    http://www.fishyfarmacy.com/products.html

    Best of luck with your new dwarf seahorse setup, Nigel!

    Happy Trails!
    Pete Giwojna

    #2802
    Pete Giwojna
    Guest

    Dear Nigel:

    I’ve been doing a little more research regarding the modified Azoo palm filter you were considering using for a small dwarf seahorse tank, and I found the following posts from another hobbyists who has been using such a system for his dwarf seahorses that I thought you might be interested in. Here is how he describes his desktop dwarf seahorse tank, which uses an Azoo palm filter:

    Ken’s Office Dwarf Seahorse Setup (2.5 gallons)

    I set up a 2.5 gal tank at my office, and have had a pair of dwarf
    seahorses in since June 20. They mated in the first week, and I
    already have 8 healthy looking babies. Nitrites were a little high
    this week, so I did two 25% water changes this evening and need to do
    one more. The test says it is still in the low end of the "stress"
    zone.

    I have been decapsulating small batches of brine shrimp eggs daily
    and setting them aside to hatch in large pill bottles. I use a
    baster to siphon out the hatchlings. This has worked okay, but I
    think I will set up the 2 liter bottle hatchery thing for better
    results.

    On the weekends when I am away, I will allow eggs to hatch directly
    in the tank. When I come back in after the weekend, I will switch J
    tubes on the palm filter to allow full force of the filter to suck
    the trash out of the tank, watching carefully to make sure no horses
    get sucked through the strainer end, then replace the retroffited J
    tube and sponge back into the filter, replace the poly filter, do a
    water change and add freshly hatched brinies.

    This is a pretty easy method, and only takes about an hour a week to
    maintain, (aside from doodling with brinies a couple times a day).

    I hope I can raise those babies up to adults. 🙂

    Ken. (continued below)

    I like to use the Azoo palm filter with a Poly filter in it instead of
    the using the little fitler pads that come with it. The flow of the
    filter is too powerful for my tastes, so I put a baffel in the J tube
    to slow the water down. A sponge filter on the intake keeps the baby
    brine from being sucked in.

    See my design here:

    <http://us.share.geocities.com/ken_mcguire/Filter.bmp&gt;

    I am happy with this design and thought others might like to see it.

    These were taken with my cell phone camera. Not the greatest, but good
    enough to share.

    http://www.geocities.com/ken_mcguire/seahorses.bmp

    http://www.geocities.com/ken_mcguire/tank.bmp

    Ken. (continued below — another update)

    I have been keeping 2 adult h.zost in a 2.5 gallon tank for 2 months
    now. They are happy little horses. I have removed the baffel from the
    filter arrangment and I am letting the Azoo palm filter run with it’s
    own flow regulator on the low setting. Still have the azoo bio sponge
    over the intake. I change about .5 gallon of water per week and
    change the poly filter in the Palm filter once a week. I also squish
    out the sponge once a week in clean salt water to remove the junk.

    I am finding that this little tank is pretty manageable, but I test it
    every day to make sure.

    Feeding baby brine and some 3 day old brinies fortified with algea
    paste once a week.

    All is well.

    Ken.

    Best of luck with your new dwarf seahorse setup, Nigel! It sounds like the Azoo palm filter can be modified and used successfully on a small dwarf seahorse tank such as you are planning.

    Happy Trails!
    Pete Giwojna

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