not eating, possibly pregnant??

Dear Lisa:

Gravid males do often behave somewhat differently; as their pregnancy progresses, they are less mobile and become real home bodies, since they cannot expose their developing brood to any unnecessary risks. They tend to hole up and may even go into hiding; they may go off to feed and miss a meal or two or fail to show up at the feeding station now and then.

But they do not stop eating altogether, and the only time they are in any pain or discomfort is when they are experiencing labor pains during the actual delivery. Pregnant males can swim perfectly normally when they want to move from one spot to another. Their distended brood pouches to not weigh them down. In other words, a pregnant male does not attempt to prop his pouch up against objects, or try to lie down or rest his pouch on the bottom, or anything of that nature.

So I am worried that George is ailing rather than pregnant, Lisa. When seahorses attempt to lie prone on the bottom for extended periods, it is usually due to either generalized weakness or negative buoyancy. They will lie down when they are too weak to hold themselves in their normal upright position, or they may be weighed down (negatively buoyant) and are thus unable to remain upright. Very often seahorses with negative buoyancy are reluctant to let go of their hitching posts because they cannot support themselves without the leverage and support their muscular tail provides when it is anchored to something.

The negative buoyancy can result from either an underinflated swimbladder or from fluid accumulation in the brood pouch or the coelomic cavity of the affected seahorse. Since George is in distress and has a swollen pouch that seems to be weighing him down, I suspect that he is suffering from a buildup of fluid in his pouch, which is a form of ascites or dropsy.

The recommended treatment in such cases is to isolate the affected seahorse in your hospital tank and treat it for two weeks using a combination of doxycycline and kanamycin. Those are potent broad-spectrum antibiotics that can be combined safely together to produce a synergistic effect that further potentiates the medications.

If possible, Lisa, I would suggest performing a needle aspiration on George to confirm that there is fluid building up within his pouch, and if so, to remove as much of the fluid as possible. This would not only verify that we are treating him for the right problem, but it would also provide him with some temporary relief from the negative buoyancy and pressure that is building up within his pouch. He should feel much better as a result, so hopefully his appetite will improve and he will begin eating again. This is how to proceed:

Needle Aspirations.

It is also very practical to aspirate air or fluid from a bloated pouch using a small hypodermic needle and a syringe (and insulin syringe is ideal for this). The pouch can easily be penetrated from the side and is not harmed by the entrance of the needle. It is a painless procedure that causes the seahorse surprisingly little discomfort, if any.

Remember, when you perform a needle aspiration, you are not penetrating the seahorse’s stomach, but rather the brood pouch that is slung beneath its belly at the base of its tail.

You cannot release the gas or fluid that has built up in your male’s pouch simply by perforating the side of his pouch with a small needle. That’s not what the term "needle aspiration" means. Rather, you need a hypodermic needle and syringe in order to perform a needle aspiration. You must first depress the plunger on the hypodermic syringe to empty all of the air out of the barrel of the syringe, and then carefully insert the hypodermic needle into the side of the pouch, just far enough to penetrate into the central cavity of the pouch, and then gradually withdraw the plunger again, which will extract the gas or fluid from that area of the pouch.

You may need to perform this procedure twice, once from the left-hand side of the pouch and once from the right-hand side of the pouch, since male seahorses in breeding condition develop an septum or internal membrane that divides their pouches roughly into left and right hemispheres. So you may need to aspirate air or fluid from the left side of the pouch, and then repeat the procedure with your hypodermic needle on the right side of the pouch in order to remove all of the trapped gas or fluid from your stallion’s marsupium.

In addition to aspirating trapped gas or fluid, the hypodermic can also be used to flush out the pouch thoroughly either with sterile saline or a medicated solution (an antibiotic or Diamox dissolved in saltwater). Here’s how another hobbyist describes this procedure:

<Open quote>
dear pete, it was time to give the antibiotics due to recurrent swelling of his pouch and i had small iv catheters but i was unable to intubate the opening. either too small or voluntary tightening by the horse. only choice left was an injection with a needle. i used a 29g insulin syringe and first removed whatever air i could. then reinjected approx .5cc mix of neomycin sulfate plus bifuran until distended then withdrew approx half of that and left the remainder in his pouch. a couple of lethargic days followed with little food intake. then he started eating live brine shrimp then the usual mysis. it is now 5 or 6 weeks later and all seems well. before that a diamox bath didnt do much but i stopped the diamox due to what seemed like unfavorable side effects. hard to believe the antibiotic injection worked so well. i gave only one injection as it seems to have worked. thanks again for all your help. he was certainly a goner without the intervention and we are most grateful. best regards sg
<close quote>

In your case, Lisa, I would suggest aspirating one side of your seahorses pouch to determine if you can withdraw any fluid using the syringe. If so, try to see if the fluid is discolored or purulent or has a foul odor of any kind. (In the laboratory, at this point, we would culture some of the aspirate to determine if any bacteria grow out and then test them for sensitivity to antibiotics so we could treat the infection quickly and effectively, but of course that’s not practical for the home hobbyist.) If you are able to withdraw any fluid, go ahead and remove as much of the fluid from each side of the pouch as possible, and then transfer George directly to your hospital tank so that he can be treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics as soon as possible. As I mentioned earlier, the best antibiotics to use for this type of problem are kanamycin combined with doxycycline.

Both of these antibiotics can be obtained without a prescription from National Fish Pharmaceuticals at the following URL:

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

While he is in the hospital tank for treatment, by all means try offering George some of his favorite live foods to tempt them to eat. When a seahorse stops eating, the most important thing is to get some food into him one way or another. You’ve got to keep his strength up and give him a chance to recover before you can worry about weaning him back onto frozen foods again. Hawaiian red feeder shrimp or volcano shrimp (Halocaridina rubra) are ideal for this — seahorses find them utterly irresistible! But anything that’s readily available — enriched adult brine shrimp, live ghost shrimp that are small enough to be swallowed, newborn guppies or mollies, Gammarus amphipods, copepods, you name it — is worth a try. Just get some good meals into George ASAP to build up his strength and help them regain his condition. If you can aspirate the fluid from his pouch, he may regain his appetite once you have relieved the pressure on his pouch and he no longer has to struggle against the negative buoyancy.

It’s possible to post photographs on this forum, but larger files such as a video clip aren’t going to work.

Best of luck treating George if it turns out that his pouch is filled with fluid, Lisa. Here’s hoping he is soon feeling much better and eating like a horse again.

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna

Dear Lisa & Wayne:

I elaborated a bit more on the directions for performing a needle aspiration in my reply to your earlier post. I’ll repeat that information here so you’ll have a better idea of just how to proceed. It should explain how deep to penetrate the side of the pouch when you are aspirating the fluid:

<Open quote>
Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like your second male is pregnant to me. Rather, if he is acting like this swollen pouch is weighing him down and is too heavy to lift, so that he has to rest it on objects or must lay on the bottom to rest rather than swimming normally, that suggests that he is having a problem with negative buoyancy due to fluid building up within his brood pouch. That’s a condition that is usually known as ascites or abdominal dropsy, and it needs to be treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics.

However, it’s quite possible for a seahorse to be pregnant and having a problem with ascites at the same time, so I would suggest that you perform a needle aspiration of the male’s pouch to get a better picture of exactly what is bothering him. A needle aspiration is a very straightforward technique that simply involves inserting a hypodermic needle through the side of the pouch, tapping into the pocket(s) of trapped gas or fluid, withdrawing the plunger on the syringe and removing the fluid or gas. If you have never done a needle aspiration before, I know it sounds a bit gruesome, but it is a surprisingly painless procedure for the seahorse and is often easier and less stressful for both the aquarist and the patient than performing pouch flushes or repeatedly massaging the pouch. Not only is a needle aspiration less traumatic, as a rule, but it is also often more effective in removing the trapped gas or fluid and relieving the problem. And it is the best way to relieve fluid build up in a case like yours.

A needle aspiration could be especially revealing for your male, since I wouldn’t necessarily rule out pregnancy under the circumstances. He could be carrying a brood of embryonic young or fetal fry in addition to fluid retention.

So if you perform a needle aspiration on your male’s distended pouch, the hypodermic may also extract fluid from the marsupium and/or yolk from ova implanted within the lining of the pouch. That can indicate whether your male is pregnant or possibly has another problem in addition to fluid retention or ascites. In fact, for those very reasons, it is standard operating procedure for the pros to perform a needle aspiration on males with buoyancy problems for diagnostic purposes, as described by Dr. Marty Greenwell below:

"As noted above, there are several potential etiologies when an animal is experiencing buoyancy problems. If the pouch appears asymmetrically distended or symmetrically distended with attendant buoyancy problems, a percutaneous fine needle aspirate should be performed on the pouch contents. Any fluid aspirated should be dried and stained with Wright-Giemsa stain, Gram stain, and acid-fast stain. The pouch can also be flushed with sterile saline and the aspirate sent for culture." ("Syngnathids Health Management," Martin G. Greenwell, Shedd Aquarium — Seahorse Husbandry in Public Aquariums: 2005 Manual.)

Remember, you’re not trying to skewer the seahorse — the wall of the pouch consists of four thin layers of epithelial and connective tissue, so you don’t need to insert the needle very far in order to penetrate the membranes of the marsupium and reach the central cavity of the pouch.

I realize performing a needle aspiration seems like an intimidating procedure, Lisa, but in actual practice, it is much easier than it sounds. In fact, because their small size makes it so difficult to burp the pouch of a dwarf seahorse, a needle aspiration is often the preferred technique for releasing pouch gas from pigmy males (Hippocampus zosterae). For instance, Kirk Strawn is an expert on H. zosterae who often performs needle aspirations or even rudimentary surgical procedures to release pouch gas from male dwarves, and he reports that the delicate dwarfs are none the worse for wear afterwards:

This is how Kirk Strawn describes pouch gas problems in pygmies in an article called ”Keeping and Breeding the Dwarf Seahorse” (Aquarium Journal, October 1954: pp 226-228.): ”Unguarded airstones disrupted many courtships. A courting male pumps up his brood pouch with water until it appears ready to burst. When this action occurs in the stream of bubbles above an air stone, a bubble is likely to be sucked into the pouch producing a disastrous effect on courtship. The male swims over to meet the female. When the air bubble in the brood pouch shifts, he loses balance and floats tail first to the surface. With great effort he swims down to a perch and wraps his tail around it. Firmly anchored, he resumes an upright position. The female comes over and wraps her tail around his. When she moves away, he follows, loses his balance, and shoots to the surface. Finally the pair give up trying to breed. These bubbles remain in the pouch unless removed. In nature death would surely result either by the male’s being washed ashore or from its being exposed to predators. In the aquarium a floating male can live indefinitely.”

Strawn then goes on to describe how this recurring problem can be remedied: ”…removing the bubble by inserting a needle into the opening of the pouch…is a more difficult operation on the little dwarfs. It is more easily accomplished either during courtship or following the delivery of young–at which times the opening to the pouch is dilated. Inserting a needle through the entrance of the pouch does not ruin a male for future breeding. A male kept away from females from February until June had bubbles removed on three occasions by puncturing the side of the pouch with a needle and squeezing out the bubble. (The urge to reproduce is so strong that males go through the motions of courtship and may pick up bubbles even if no females are present.) On June seventh he was placed with a ripe, freshly caught female. On the seventeenth I cut a slit in the side of the pouch and removed a bubble and two partly formed babies. By the twentieth [3 days later] the slit was healed over, and he had another air bubble. On the 23rd I partially removed this bubble by forcing a needle through the entrance of the pouch. On the 25th [2 days later] yolk came out when the needle was inserted. On July 5th he gave birth to a large brood after which a bubble was squeezed out of the dilated opening of the pouch without the aid of a needle. The next day he sucked in another bubble while courting. Although removing bubbles does not permanently damage the fish, it is much easier to put a fence, such as a cylinder of plastic screen, around the air stone and its rising stream of bubbles” (Strawn, 1954).

Notice that Strawn performed needle aspirations on the same male several times within a short period, and even performed crude pouch surgery on the pregnant male, yet the dwarf seahorse was untroubled by these procedures, recovered fully, and eventually gave birth to large broods of young nonetheless. If the delicate dwarf male can tolerate the procedure so well, even when pregnancy complicates the picture, your pony should have no problem with a needle aspiration.

I know a needle aspiration sounds like an intimidating procedure but you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is in actual practice.

First of all, let me emphasize that it’s a very safe procedure. The only real risk is a slight danger of secondary infection, but if you’re using a sterilized needle that risk is virtually negligible. It’s true that the lining of the pouch is heavily vascularized — especially in pregnant males — but it is capillary rich and not fed by any major veins are arteries, so there is no significant risk of bleeding or hemorrhaging at all. Once the needle penetrates the wall of the pouch and reaches the central cavity, there is really nothing inside that it could damage. Aside from the septum — a longitudinal wall of tissue or membrane that divides the pouch into left and right hemispheres — the central cavity of the pouch is basically a void. And even if you inserted the needle far enough to pierce the central septum, no harm would be done by penetrating that membrane with a needle. The septum is a simple wall of tissue whose only purpose is to provide additional surface area on which fertilized eggs can implant. You could punch it full of holes like a sieve and it would have no detrimental effects or adverse impacts on the seahorse at all. So a needle aspiration is a simple, straightforward procedure, and even if you bungle it somehow and fail to extract the trapped fluid or gas, no harm will be done to the seahorse in the attempt. The entire procedure is virtually painless and stress free for the seahorse, although they will naturally struggle initially when being restrained.

The size of the syringe and the gauge of the hypodermic needle are really not that important, although the type of small hypodermic as a needle is used for treating diabetes are ideal for performing needle aspirations on secrets.

The procedure is accomplished while the seahorse is held under water, just as you would if burping or flushing the pouch, and you grasp the seahorse in the same manner as well.

Prepare the needle and syringe ahead of time by sterilizing the hypodermic. When you are ready, wet your hands first and hold the seahorse upright in the water with your non-dominant hand, allowing his tail to wrap your little finger or ring finger so he has a good grip and feels secure.

While the seahorse is thus restrained, use your dominant hand to insert the needle into the side of the pouch (not the front) so you can tap into the pocket of trapped fluid.

Remember, you are not performing a subcutaneous or intramuscular injection, so there is no need to use a shallow angle when penetrating the wall of the pouch. Depress the plunger all the way and then insert the hypodermic laterally, from the side of the pouch rather than the front, at a perpendicular angle to the wall of the pouch. Use a very gentle pressure to penetrate the wall of the pouch, and you should be able to feel the sudden lack of resistance as the needle passes through the wall of the marsupium into the central cavity of the pouch. In most cases, that is where the trapped gas or fluid should be.

The wall of the pouch is fairly thin, so after the needle penetrates a few millimeters you should be well within the central cavity. (The wall of the pouch thickens and enlarges in pregnant males due to the placenta-like changes that take place in the lining of the pouch, so you may have to insert the needle deeper than normal if you’re dealing with a gravid male.) If you insert the needle too far, you will encounter resistance again momentarily, indicating you have passed through the central cavity and encountered the septum; if this happens, just retract the needle slightly and you should be back in the central cavity. When you feel the needle is within the central cavity, gradually withdraw the plunger on the syringe and remove the trapped gas/fluid. Successfully aspirating the gas or fluid in this way should relieve the pressure and swelling and provide your male with some immediate relief.

More importantly, it would allow you to examine the fluid you aspirated to better assess the seahorses condition. If the aspirate consists of a clear watery liquid (i.e., marsupial fluid) or contains traces of yellow yolk, that would indicate that your male is pregnant. If the fluid is discolored or purulent, that indicates an infection. If the aspirate includes gas as well as fluid, that indicates GBS is also a factor in your male’s problems.

If the fluid you aspirate is discolored or contains pus or has a foul odor of any kind, then you can be confident that the problem is ascites or abdominal dropsy, and you should isolate your male in your hospital tank so that you can begin treating him with powerful antibiotics as soon as possible.

The recommended treatment in such cases is to isolate the affected seahorse in your hospital tank and treat it for two weeks using a combination of doxycycline and kanamycin. Those are potent broad-spectrum antibiotics that can be combined safely together to produce a synergistic effect that further potentiates the medications.

Both of these antibiotics can be obtained without a prescription from National Fish Pharmaceuticals at the following URL:

Click here: Fish Medications
http://www.fishyfarmacy.com/products.html
<close quote>

Okay, Lisa — that’s the quick rundown explaining more precisely how to perform the needle aspiration(s). Don’t worry that you’re going to harm poor old George — the needle aspiration should make it clear whether he is pregnant or simply suffering from fluid building up within his pouch, as I suspect, or possibly both. If it is fluid retention, then removing as much of the fluid as possible during the needle aspirations should relieve the pressure and hopefully he will feel much better when he doesn’t have to fight against the negative buoyancy and will begin eating the live shrimp. If not, the antibiotics should stop the infection and help him recover.

Best of luck performing this procedure, Wayne and Lisa! You will find that it’s easier in actual practice that it sounds.

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna

If Wayne yne did it correctly their was first clear fluid, he did it again and there was air as well along with the fluid. These firsts are nerve wracking. I couldn’t take a video. I couldn’t see and I would have blocked Wayne’s view…

We’ll keep you posted…

Thank you

Oh, How often do we need to do this? if george is not pregnant, then he is still swollen with air and clear fluid…

Dear Wayne & Lisa:

I’m terribly sorry to hear about the demise of George — please accept all my condolences on your loss!

Rest assured that you did not kill him by performing the needle aspiration. It’s a very safe procedure and the first thing that a veterinarian or professional aquaculturist would have done in such a situation is to perform a needle aspiration, examine the fluid from the pouch microscopically, and then culture the fluid to see which bacteria grow out so they can test them for sensitivity to antibiotics and administer the proper treatment. When a seahorse suffering from fluid build up reaches the point where he stops eating and is weighed down so much he lays on the bottom, the aquarist must do something to intervene as soon as possible, and removing the accumulated fluid via a needle aspiration can provide some immediate relief and buy time while you are waiting for the proper antibiotics to arrive or to take affect. A needle aspiration is a one-time procedure; it is done once so that you can examine the fluid that has been removed and hopefully relieve the negative buoyancy, but then it’s up to the antibiotics to cure the infection and resolve the problem. In short, you did the right thing…

George didn’t starve to death. Going two days without eating is not long enough for starvation to result, but it may have contributed to his generalized weakness.

It is not normal for the fecal pellets to be hard and firm — they are normally soft and pliable, not solid like a grain of rice, so it’s possible that George may have developed an intestinal blockage or at least a problem with constipation. Constipation and intestinal blockages will both result in abdominal distention and a loss of appetite, and can also contribute to fluid retention.

When an intestinal obstruction does form, it takes several days for the seahorse to expire since it is unable to digest its food properly and obtain nutrition. They will usually go off their feed and stop eating, and then just gradually waste away over a period of days.

Intestinal blockages are most often seen in dwarf seahorses and juveniles that are being fed baby brine shrimp, and are typically caused by ingesting some of the indigestible egg cases when the empty eggshells or unhatched cysts are not separated properly from the newly hatched brine shrimp prior to feeding the seahorses.

Abdominal swelling and loss of appetite are also symptoms of constipation. Constipation is more common in fishes with laterally compressed bodies such as seahorses and can be caused by overfeeding, a change in diet, certain medications, stress, and rarely an intestinal blockage. The literature reports the following symptoms of constipation in fishes:

"The abdomen swells, the fish has little interest in food, and the fish is sluggish or resting on the bottom. No symptoms of disease is present; a string of feces often trails behind the fish."

The following cures for constipated fish are often suggested, Lisa, but I have no idea if they would be effective for seahorses:

(1) Fast the fish for two days.
(2) After fasting, feed the affected fish with live foods such as brine
shrimp rather than frozen foods.
(3) Soak the fish’s food in cod liver oil or place two drops of cod
liver oil directly in the fishes mouth so that it is swallowed.
(4) induce the fish to eat a single grain of Epsom salt.

Here’s what I would suggest if you ever suspect a problem with constipation:

Stop feeding the seahorse immediately. Fast him for two days and
observe him closely to see if the constipation is relieved and he
produces any fecal pellets.

While he is fasting, obtain some live adult brine shrimp and cod liver
oil. If he is not producing normal fecal pellets after two days of
fasting, soak the live adult brine shrimp in water that you’ve added
cod liver oil to for one hour, and then feed the brine shrimp that have
soaked in (and hopefully ingested) the cod liver oil immediately to
your seahorse, being careful not to overfeed. Feed him a strict diet
of cod-liver-oil-soaked brine shrimp sparingly for a couple of days and
see if that relieves his constipation.

If that doesn’t relieve the abdominal swelling and induce him to start
eliminating fecal pellets again, you could try tube feeding him with
two drops of the cod liver oil, injecting it directly into his
esophagus so it’s sure to reach his gastrointestinal tract.

If there is a silver lining in this whole situation, it’s the fact that if constipation or an intestinal blockage contributed to George’s demise, the rest of the seahorses should not be affected at all.

Best of luck with the rest of your seahorses, Lisa and Wayne.

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna