live mysis shrimp

Dear Dawn:

It sounds like you have been doing a good job of providing above foods for your seahorses and coaxing the reluctant eater to partake of that leased the live Mysis. It can sometimes be very difficult to glean pet shop ponies in wild caught seahorses onto frozen foods, and I know how expensive it is to provide them with choice live foods instead.

Your best bet might be to purchase some of the live Mysis yourself and try culturing them in order to maintain a supply of your own without having to
always purchase them instead. Then you can gradually try reading the seahorses from the live Mysis onto frozen Mysis instead, it gradually introducing a few of the frozen Mysis along with the live, and then imparting movement to the frozen Mysis so that it appears to be moving (more tips on that later).

Here’s an excerpt from my new book on seahorses that discusses the pros and cons of live Mysis, and outlines one method for culturing them that is suitable for the home hobbyist:

MYSIDS (Opossum Shrimp)

Pros:
· Excellent food value.
· A favorite natural food that all large seahorses attack greedily.
· Thrives in saltwater: feed and forget — will survive until eaten.
· Can be easily collected at times.
· Cultured Mysis are available.

Cons:
· Challenging to culture for the home hobbyist.
· Inland hobbyists have no opportunity to collect them.
Collecting Tips:

Mysis shrimp follow a daily rhythm in their movements, regularly forming dense shoals over sandy bottoms or amidst seaweeds, and they can sometimes be collected in vast numbers while shoaling by seining or dragging a large aquarium net through mats of vegetation (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Look for a shallow, sandy, weedy area at low tide during the day, and you can often see them swimming in the weeds or settling on the sand. If there is a significant current, they will congregate in slack water areas on the down-current side of objects. Once you have spotted a likely location, return at dusk when they are more active and net them as described above (Bentley, 2002).

A large net with very fine mesh works best for collecting mysids. I suggest a net with a mouth at least a foot square and mesh less than 1 mm square (Bentley, 2002).

Likewise, mysids are sometimes concentrated in large numbers in tidal pools on mudflats and grassflats by the falling tide. The stranded Mysis can easily be netted from these pools at low tide.
Culture Instructions (Bentley, 2002):

Specific gravity: 1.016 for estuarine species;
pH: 7.8-8.3 (reproduction stops if the pH falls lower than 7.4);
Photoperiod: 14 hours of daylight provided by two Gro-lux fluorescent tubes.
Temperature: 77 degrees F (25 degrees C)

The following guidelines are based on Maureen Bentley’s methods for culturing Mysis (Bentley, 2002). The main culture tank should be large, well aerated, and heavily filtered. I suggest undergravel filtration in conjunction with external biological filters. Mysids are extremely sensitive to water quality, and a good protein skimmer is vital for this reason (Bentley, 2002). Natural seawater is much preferable to artificial, and if you are using a synthetic mix, it’s best to allow the artificial saltwater to age at least one month before use (Bentley, 2002).

When stocking the main tank, introduce the shrimp gradually until you’ve reached a density of about 20-40 adults per gallon (Bentley, 2002). Overcrowding leads to fighting and dead broodstock. If you notice lots of mysids jumping out of the water, the tank is very likely overstocked (Bentley, 2002).

Small quantities of mysids can be harvested daily using a small glass tank equipped with an air-operated undergravel filter. Place 15 to 20 large gravid females in the small tank, returning them to the main tank as soon as they have released their young (Bentley, 2002). (Mysis are cannibalistic and the young must be separated from the adults.) The young can then be raised in the small tank for a short period.

Feed them newly hatched Artemia nauplii or rotifers twice daily until they are a few days old (Bentley, 2002). After a few days, begin supplementing their feedings with marine flake food on occasion, especially brine shrimp flake food (Bentley, 2002).

A feeding frenzy will follow the introduction of live food, which can help you determine the right amount to feed. When fed the proper amount, this frenzy should last around 15 minutes, during which all the live food should be eaten (Bentley, 2002). You will know you have fed enough when the normally transparent mysids have orange stomachs after feeding on the baby brine shrimp (Bentley, 2002). If the adults — especially the males — start eating numbers of the younger Mysis, that’s a sure sign of underfeeding (Bentley, 2002).
Comments:

Mysidacea, or Opossum Shrimps, are found worldwide. They are small shrimplike crustaceans with a heavy carapace covering their thorax. They are commonly called opossum shrimp because the females carrying their developing young in a bulging pouch or marsupium formed by thoracic plates at the base of their legs (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). The average life span is about 12 months and adult mysids seldom exceed 1 inch in length. At least 460 Mysis species are found around the world (Bentley, 2002), and wherever opossum shrimp occur, they form a large part of the indigenous seahorses’ natural diet. They are snapped up greedily by even the most finicky syngnathids, including the fabulous but delicate Seadragons (Phycodorus and Phyllopteryx sp.). In fact, large seahorses are so fond of these crustaceans that they scarf up frozen Mysids with relish. This is superb food that should form the basis of your seahorses’ diet if you can possibly obtain it–live, fresh, or frozen (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

So that’s one method of going about it, Dawn. If you search the Net, you’ll find scads of information on culturing Mysis, which should give you a pretty good idea whether or not it’s practical in your case.

Your next step in the weaning process will be to start offering a few frozen Mysis mixed in with the live Mysis. A good way to do that is to target feed the seahorses using a turkey baster or a similar implement to impart movement to the frozen Mysis and make it appear alive. The old-fashioned ones with the glass barrels work best because the seahorses can see the Mysis inside the baster all the way as it moves down the barrel and out the tip. By exerting just the right amount of pressure on the bulb, great precision is possible when target feeding with a turkey baster. By squeezing and releasing the bulb ever so slightly, a skillful target feeder can keep a piece of Mysis dancing at the very tip of the baster indefinitely, and hold the tempting morsel right in front of the seahorse’s mouth as long as necessary. Or if the seahorse rejects the Mysis the first time it drifts by, a baster makes it easy to deftly suck up the shrimp from the bottom so it can be offered to the target again. Or you can use the baster to impart some tantalizing movement to a piece of frozen Mysis after it has settled on the bottom by giving it a gentle squirt of water or a series of squirts.

Once the more aggressive feeders begin accepting the frozen Mysis, the reluctant eater should soon learn from their example and begin eating it as well.

I wrote an article that explains how to go about training wild seahorses to eat frozen foods, which may be helpful in your case. It is available online from the Breeder’s Registry at the following URL:

Click here: FAMA Nov 1996. Seahorse Nutrition – Part II: Frozen Foods for Adults
<http://www.breedersregistry.org/Reprints/FAMA/v19_nov96/giwojna_pt2.htm&gt;

It should give you a pretty good idea of how to proceed, but bear in mind that in several years old; the article was written before the advent of captive bred seahorses and doesn’t apply to farm-raised ponies. Captive bred seahorses are trained to accept frozen Mysis as their staple, everyday diet and should not go on hunger strikes or require live foods at all except as an occasional treat.

Best of luck keeping your seahorses well fed and training them to accept frozen foods, Dawn!

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna