Pete Giwojna

Dear Adam:

Yes, sir, a prominent white lesion that has just appeared on the tail of your seahorse could be an indication of the tail infection or even the beginning of dreaded tail rot.

To be on the safe side, I suggest that you administer a broad-spectrum antibiotic such as kanamycin sulfate to your seahorse orally by mixing it with frozen Mysis and Focus and then feeding the medicated Mysis to the affected seahorses as a precaution.

The following information will explain how to combine SeaChem KanaPlex (kanamycin sulfate) and Seachem Focus with frozen Mysis which can then be fed to your seahorses as usual, sir:

The antibiotics that work best for most home hobbyists when treating seahorses are a group of medications by SeaChem that can be used together and mixed with frozen Mysis in order to administer the medications orally.

The SeaChem medications that work best for this purpose are SeaChem KanaPlex, SeaChem NeoPlex, and Focus by SeaChem.

The active ingredient in SeaChem KanaPlex is kanamycin sulfate, a potent aminoglycoside antibiotic that is a very broad spectrum, and which can be combined with the neomycin sulfate (another aminoglycoside antibiotic) in SeaChem NeoPlex to create a synergistic effect that is more effective than either of these antibiotics used by themselves.

The SeaChem NeoPlex contains neomycin sulfate, a good aminoglycoside antibiotic that is very effective when ingested, and the SeaChem Focus contains a good nitrofuran antibiotic and is the perfect medium for mixing medications with frozen foods. I will explain more about how to use these two products together for you below.

Both the KanaPlex and the Focus come with little scoops for measuring out the proper dose of the medication, Adam, and preparing the frozen Mysis with the medications is actually pretty easy. First, you want to find out how much of the Mysis you are using amounts to a tablespoon. I imagine that several of the cubes of Mysis would be needed to fill a tablespoon after you have thawed it out as usual, if that’s the form of frozen Mysis you happen to have. (It’s important to find out how much of the thawed Mysis constitutes 1 tablespoon because the correct dosage for KanaPlex is one scoop or measure per tablespoon of Mysis.)

Once you have thawed out 1 tablespoon of the frozen Mysis, you then measure out one scoop of the KanaPlex and five scoops of the Focus and mix the two medications thoroughly so that they bind together. (You always add five times as much of the Focus as the amount of antibiotic you are using.) Once you have mixed the powdered KanaPlex and Focus together very well, you then add the resulting mixture to the tablespoon of thawed Mysis you have prepared and very gently but thoroughly mix the powder and Mysis together so that the medications bind to the shrimp. You can then either feed the medicated Mysis to your seahorses immediately or freeze it for later use.

Once you have prepared the medicated Mysis, you feed it to your seahorses twice a day for at least five consecutive days or as long as is takes for the symptoms to clear up.

Of course, you can prepare more than 1 tablespoon of the medicated Mysis at a time in order to make it more convenient, Adam. For example, if you wanted to prepare 5 tablespoons of medicated Mysis’s at one time, you would thaw out 5 tablespoons worth of your Mysis in advance. Then you would take 5 scoops of KanaPlex (one scoop of KanaPlex per tablespoon) and 25 scoops of the Focus (5 times as many scoops of Focus as the antibiotic) and mix it together thoroughly with the five scoops of KanaPlex so that they blend together and bind. Finally, you would take the mixture of powders and gently but thoroughly combine the powdered medications with the thawed Mysis so that the medicine also binds with the shrimp.

If you want to prepare extra medicated Mysis in advance, it’s best to spread it out on a piece of Saran wrap or Glad wrap or aluminum foil, or something similar, so that you can cover it completely to protect it from freezer burn until you’re ready to use it.

Here is some additional information on the Focus by Seachem Laboratories, which explains how to use it to combine medication with food:

<open quote>
Seachem Laboratories Focus – 5 Grams Information

Focus ™ is an antibacterial polymer for internal infections of fish. It may be used alone or mixed with other medications to make them palatable to fish and greatly reduce the loss of medications to the water through diffusion. It can deliver any medication internally by binding the medication to its polymer structure. The advantage is that the fish can be medicated without contaminating the entire aquarium with medication. Fish find Focus™ appetizing and it may be fed to fish directly or mixed with frozen foods. Focus™ contains nitrofurantoin for internal bacterial infections. Marine and freshwater use. 5 gram container.

Types of Infections Treated:

Fungal
Bacterial

Focus
DIRECTIONS: Use alone or in combination with medication of your choice in a 5:1 ratio by volume. Feed directly or blend with fresh or frozen food. Feed as usual, but no more than fish will consume. Use at every feeding for at least five days or until symptoms clear up.

Contains polymer bound nitrofurantoin.

Active ingredient: polymer bound nitrofurantoin (0.1%). This product is not a feed and should not be fed directly. Its intended application is to assist in binding medications to fish food.
<close quote>

And here is an excerpt from an e-mail from another home hobbyist (Ann Marie Spinella) that explains how she uses the KanaPlex together with the Focus for treating her seahorses, Adam that at an:

“When I bought the KanaPlex yesterday I also picked up a tube of Focus. According to the instructions, it says it makes the medication more palatable to fish and reduces the loss of the medication once it’s in the water.

So I followed the dosing instructions exactly. I used regular frozen Mysis instead of Piscine Energetics frozen Mysis. I figured it was softer and smaller. I was thinking along the lines of more surface area for the medication to adhere to, and with the softer shell, hopefully it would absorb into the shrimp a little better.

I used 8 cubes which came to just about 1 tablespoon. I thawed and rinsed the shrimp thoroughly in a little colander and let it sit on a paper towel to remove as much water as possible.

Then I put in it in a small dish and added the Focus and KanaPlex in the recommended ratio which is 5:1 (5 scoops Focus / 1 scoop KanaPlex). I mixed it thoroughly and added a few drops of Garlic Power.

Then I measured out 5 – 1/4 tsp. servings and 4 servings I placed on a sheet of Glad Press & Seal, sealed them and put them in the freezer, since it says in the instructions that you can freeze what you don’t use right away, and the remaining 1/4 tsp. I split in half and fed to them this morning. The rest I’ll give to them this afternoon and I’ll do this every day with the remaining shrimp that I already prepared and froze.

In the video you can see that the seahorses are eating it. Yea!!

Thanks for all of your help & I’ll keep you posted.”
Ann Marie

Okay, Adam, that’s the rundown on using the KanaPlex together with the Focus so that you could administer the medication in the KanaPlex orally after adding it to the frozen Mysis for the seahorses daily meals. If you got the NeoPlex instead of the KanaPlex, it can be combined with Focus and administered in exactly the same way as outlined in the instructions for the KanaPlex above.

This is a very stress-free method of treatment that allows you to safely medicate your seahorse in the main tank where it is most comfortable. Don’t worry if all of the seahorses get some of the medicated Mysis; it won’t do them any harm whatsoever, and may even be useful in protecting them as I guess similar infections.

Best of luck with your granddaddy, sir. Here’s hoping that he is soon good as new again.

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support

Dear Logan:

Yes, sir, 120 Nassarius snails are WAY too many for a 30-gallon aquarium. That’s a lot of biomass to add to a relatively small aquarium at one time, so you will need to be alert to the danger of a potential spite in the ammonia or nitrite levels in the tank. That’s the immediate danger…

The second thing to beware of is that Nassarius snails are not grazers that feed on algae, but rather, they are meat eaters that will clean up leftover frozen Mysis. But there will not be enough leftover frozen Mysis from the ponies in a 30-gallon setup at mealtime to sustain 120 Nassarius snails, so there is a danger that they will begin dying off due to starvation.

Of course, you could attempt to compensate by feeding additional frozen Mysis just for the snails once the seahorses have had their fill, but all of that extra frozen Mysis would again increase the risk of a dangerous spike in the ammonia or nitrate levels following a heavy feeding. So it’s going to be very tricky for you to keep all 120 snails adequately fed without overdoing it and triggering a spike in nitrogenous wastes. That would be a delicate balance to try to maintain for any significant period.

In short, Logan, you don’t want to maintain more than 10-12 Nassarius snails in your 30-gallon seahorse tank for any length of time, so you should make plans to re-home 100+ Nassarius snails as soon as possible. Perhaps your local fish store would be happy to take the surplus off your hands since their regular supplier has not been able to get Nassarius for them recently.

If not, you may have friends with saltwater aquariums who would love to get some free Nassarius snails, so maybe you can disperse many of them to your fellow hobbyists.

Otherwise, you’ll have to set up some sort of additional aquarium to house the excess Nassarius so that they don’t become a potential risk to your seahorses in the 30 gallon setup. Nassarius snails like to bury in the sand, so this extra tank should have an inch or two of fine sand (preferably live sand, in my opinion) that they can burrow into; and this new tank will also need to have an efficient biofilter to sustain that many snails indefinitely. You can just feed the snail tank with a decent amount of frozen Mysis daily, and hopefully everything will go smoothly.

Good luck!

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support

Dear Pat:

There are indeed quite a number of other live foods which you can offer your seahorses from time to time in order to provide them with the more varied diet, and which you can collect yourself or culture at home so that they do not have to be purchased. Here’s an excerpt from an article I wrote that discusses that very topic, including more information about the live Mysis, ghost shrimp, glass shrimp, and Gammarus amphipods. The material also explains how these live foods can be collected and/or cultured, where feasible:

[Open quote]
LIVE FOODS

Live foods are not nearly as important for the 21st-Century seahorse keeper as they were in bygone days when wild specimens were the only game in town. Nowadays they are primarily useful for easing the adjustment of new arrivals after acclimating them to the aquarium, providing monthly treats for our pampered pets, for introducing a little variety into their staple diet of frozen Mysis, and perhaps for populating refugia.

They can also be invaluable for those rare occasions when seahorses are ailing. Many medications have the unfortunate side effect of suppressing appetite, so when treating sickly seahorses, it’s a good idea to tempt them with choice live foods in order to keep them eating and help build up their strength while recuperating.

In addition, a number of important drugs are only effective in saltwater if administered orally, and gut-loading live shrimp with these meds is a great way to get seahorses to ingest them. Gut-loading live food with antibiotics and then feeding the medicated shrimp to your seahorses can also be a useful way to treat them in your main tank without impairing your biofiltration or subjecting the patients to the added stress of isolation. Separating an ailing seahorse from its mate and herdmates and transferring it to a strange new environment for treatment can be a traumatic experience, especially since the Spartan surroundings in the sterile environment of a sparsely furnished hospital tank can leave seahorses feeling vulnerable and exposed.

Most hobbyists are quite content to feed captive-bred seahorses their standard diet of enriched frozen mysids. It’s a highly nutritious diet that satisfies their long-term needs, the seahorses are accustomed to eating it, and the convenience of such a feeding regimen is unsurpassed. But if convenience is not your overriding concern, feel free to consider live foods for your seahorses. Providing you can afford the added expense, and you can spare the time and effort to culture live foods and/or collect them from the seashore, then there’s really no compelling reason not to use them.

And there are few advantages to offering your seahorse a diet of live foods. It can be a wonderfully varied diet since there are so many different live foods are available to aquarists nowadays: live Mysis shrimp, Gammarus amphipods, red feeder shrimp (Halocaridina rubra), Caprellids, Ghost shrimp and Grass shrimp, post-larval shrimp (PLS), various copepods, and so on. Variety is the spice of life, and there’s no denying that seahorses naturally prefer to hunt living prey rather than foraging for nonliving prey.

On rare occasions, even farm-raised seahorses sometimes lose interest in a steady diet of frozen fare over time and begin to eat it half-heartedly. This is quite uncommon with captive-bred seahorses that eat frozen Mysis relicta, which is loaded with natural odor attractants that stimulate the seahorse’s feeding instincts, but it still happens from time to time, especially when genuine Mysis relicta is not available.

Live foods are the answer to this problem. When sea horses tire of the same old, boring frozen food and refuse to eat their “veggies,” living prey is what they crave: Mysids, ghost shrimp, Gammarus or adult Artemia — the type of food isn’t really as important as the fact that it’s alive and kicking (Giwojna, Nov. 1996). Nothing stimulates a sea horse’s feeding instincts like the frantic movements and evasive maneuvers of real, live, “catch-me-if-you-can” prey items (Giwojna, Nov. 1996). Live foods are guaranteed to perk up an ailing appetite and excite the interest of the most jaded “galloping gourmets.” When it comes to a hunger strike, living prey is the only sure cure for the “Bird’s Eye blues.” (Giwojna, Nov. 1996)

One of the reasons I prefer to liven up my seahorses’ monotonous existence by providing them with unenriched adult Artemia on fast days, is that I find it flat out fascinating to watch them hunting live prey. Whenever I see a hungry seahorse patiently stalking its prey, I am always reminded of a Japanese sniper in a WWII John Wayne movie (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). With a lush growth of leaves and foliage draped over his helmet and extra shrubbery strapped to his back, the cunning jungle fighter literally melts into the shadowy undergrowth. From his strategically selected vantage point, the sharp-eyed sentry waits for his unsuspecting victims to come to him, picking off hapless GIs one by one as they pass his secret hideout (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

That’s a pretty fair description of a hungry Hippocampine on the lookout for its supper. Masters of camouflage, seahorses are the snipers of the grassblade jungle into which they blend so well, and their preferred hunting technique is the ambush (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Concealed absolutely motionless amidst a clump of Caulerpa or a patch of gorgonians, only a flicker of its busy, watchful eyes ever betrays its presence. Patiently lying in wait for its next meal, one of its independent eyes scans upward while the other scrolls downward so as not to miss any potential prey passing nearby (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

When some unwary victim does blunder within range of one of these seagrass snipers, the seahorse tracks it intently, stalking its prey in ultra-slow motion (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). With its tail securely anchored in place, it stretches its body in the direction of its chosen quarry ever so s-l-o-w-l-y, making itself seem like a harmless frond of algae or a natural extension of the coral (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). But when this painstaking pursuit finally brings it within striking distance, it’s all over in a hurry! Drawing a bead on its ”dinner” exactly as if its snout were the barrel of a high-powered rifle, the seahorse gives a sudden jerk of its head, accompanied by a distinctly audible ”click,” and its hapless victim disappears as if by magic, sucked up faster than the eye can follow (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Anyone who has ever collected fishes with a slurp gun knows exactly how a feeding seahorse accomplishes this vanishing act. The toothless jaws at the end of its snout operate with a rapid springlike action, and the spasmodic jerk of the seahorse’s head as it snatches its prey represents the cocking and firing of this muscular “spring-loaded” mechanism (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Thus, when a seahorse points the barrel of its snout at its intended victim, lining up the target in its sights, and pulls the trigger, well-developed muscles depress the hyoid bone, enlarging its mouth (buccal) cavity and expanding its gills (opercular cavities) sharply, creating a strong inrush like an expanding bellows, and the powerful suction pulls in its prey irresistibly along with a little water. The seahorse’s mousetrap jaws spring open and snap shut again, and it literally inhales its victim in the blink of the eye (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). One moment the prey is there, and the next it’s gone. (For more detailed information regarding the seahorses’ remarkable feeding mechanism, including the exact bones and muscles involved in the operation of the buccal and opercular suction pumps, refer to the discussion of “weak snick” in the disease chapter.)

Feeding seahorses are entertaining to watch, and the attentive aquarist can learn a lot about his pets from watching them eat. For instance, if they’re really hungry, seahorses will take off in hot pursuit when some mouth-watering morsel wanders by just beyond reach (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). No longer content to wait for their supper to come to them, they’ll launch themselves on a ”high-speed” chase at a blistering pace that’s just about capable of overtaking a lumbering brine shrimp or weary water flea (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Once they’ve closed to within about one-quarter inch of their target — often prodded along by their tails to gain a final burst of added propulsion — that distinctive ”snick!” will announce the sudden demise of their quarry (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

And when no prey is evident, seahorses will sometimes set off on hunting expeditions in a effort to scare up a meal on their own (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). A seahorse on safari will patrol the perimeter of its aquarium, carefully searching every nook and cranny as it skims along just above the bottom (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). (This behavior is often displayed when seahorses are hunting Gammarus, since the side-swimmers hug the bottom and seek shelter under every scrap of cover they can find. These amphipods are a favorite food of seahorses, which will often resort to amazing acrobatics in an attempt to winnow them out of their hiding places.) Suffice it to say, when you see your seahorses conducting these search-and-destroy missions, it’s time to feed them (Giwojna, Oct. 1996)!

For best results, live foods should be fortified before the seahorses are fed, and there is one final precaution the hobbyist can take during the enrichment process. Soaking live foods in DC-DHA SELCO, which is said to have antimicrobial properties, can help disinfect the food as well as enriching it (Bull and Mitchell 2002).

Therefore, although they play a much-diminished role when keeping captive-bred seahorses, it is still important for the aquarist to understand the benefits and limitations various live foods have to offer. Listed in order of their desirability from most useful to least helpful, the following live foods still deserve a prominent place in the seahorse keeper’s larder of tempting taste treats.

MYSIDS (Opossum Shrimp)

Pros (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· 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 seaweeds10, 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).

POST LARVAE SHRIMP (PLS): Ecuadorian White Shrimp (Penaeus vannamei, a.k.a. Litopenaeus vannamei)

Pros:
· Feed-and-forget — thrive until eaten in full-strength saltwater.
· High Health — guaranteed disease-free feeder shrimp for our ponies!
· Natural, highly nutritious food seahorses are accustomed to eating in the wild.
· Easy to feed and maintain.
· Long lasting — remain in the bite-sized larval stage for months.

Cons:
· Only available if purchased in huge quantities.
· PLS are notorious cannibals– will fatten up on each other if not well fed.

Collection Tips:
None.

Culture Instructions:
Post Larvae Shrimp are not suitable for batch cultures and self-sustaining cultures are not possible, but home hobbyists can easily maintain them. A 10 to 15-gallon tank is sufficient for up to 1,000 larval shrimp (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.). The culture tank can be either an aquarium or any other inert container of sufficient volume. For example, rubbermaid containers work well as long as they are equipped with adequate filtration.

Feeding PLS is a breeze. They will eat just about anything. They’ll take flake food and frozen foods and are especially fond of frozen Mysis relicta, which makes a superb staple diet for them (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.). Whatever you feed them as their everyday diet, however, be sure to fortify the PLS with a good enrichment product. Enriching PLS with formulas that are rich in HUFA and long-chain fatty acids will assure that the larvae have maximum nutritional value when they are fed to your seahorses (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.).

PLS will be 4-7 mm in length when you receive them, and at standard aquarium temps of 24 C (74-75 F) they will remain small enough to be eaten by large seahorses for at least 1-2 months (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.). PLS are thus useful as fry food when they first arrive and are suitable for feeding small ponies for the next 3-4 weeks at 74 F.

Their growth rate is dependent on water temperature. If you can chill their tank, and maintain 60-70 F, they will grow at an extremely slow rate and remain in the larval stage for several months.

Cheryl Colburn is one hobbyist who has worked extensively with PLS and she reports they are almost indestructible in the aquarium. If fact, she has never lost one of her larvae for any other reason than predation by another PLS.

Comments:
If you can obtain them, PLS are the ideal live food for seahorses. They are the larvae of Ecuadorian White Shrimp (Penaeus vannamei), which are cultured in enormous numbers on shrimp farms for human consumption (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.). Since they are destined to become people food, White Shrimp are raised at High-Health aquaculture facilities and are certified to free of specific pathogens and parasites. You couldn’t ask for a healthier, more nutritious food for your seahorses and all Hippocampines devour them greedily. They can be raised in hobby tanks to provide perfect fodder for any seahorses from fry to young ponies to mature adults, so they are suitable for every aquarist’s needs. Any of the larval shrimp that are able to hide out and evade capture long enough to mature, will eventually breed and provide nutritious nauplii for all your reef inhabitants (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.).

The only problem is that PLS farmers deal in volume and a shipment of 40,000 larvae is their minimum order (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.). They are accustomed to dealing with aquaculture facilities that order in the millions. So individual hobbyists are out of luck, but collectively, hobbyists have a perfect opportunity to pool their resources together and provide their seahorses with an unsurpassed live food source quite inexpensively (Cheryl Colburn, pers. com.). Split an order for 40,000 PLS between 40 different hobbyists, and each participant can provide his ponies with the perfect natural food very affordably. This is a great project for marine aquarium societies and the seahorse hobbyist community, in general. Popular groups such as the Ocean Rider Club, Ultimate Seahorse, <http://www.seahorse.org/&gt; and <http://www.syngnathid.org/&gt; could make the necessary arrangements easily and efficiently and provide a wonderful service for members who are interested, as advocated by Cheryl Colburn.

GHOST SHRIMP or GLASS SHRIMP

Pros (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· A highly nutritious, natural food for large seahorses.
· Available from pet shops or aquarium stores as well as through the mail.
· Very easy to gut-load and enrich with various supplements
· Good tolerance for saltwater: brackish ghosts last surprisingly long, and even freshwater ghost shrimp survive long enough to be a very useful food.

Cons (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Suitable only for the largest specimens.
· Often too expensive to use more than occasionally.

Collecting Tips:
Ghost Shrimp are seasonally abundant along the Gulf Coast of the US in salt marshes, rivers that empty into the sea, tidal creeks and brackish bays (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). Brackish Ghosts can be collected easily at low tide by vigorously shaking clumps of floating seaweed into a bucket of seawater, or by dragging a small seine or large aquarium net through tidal creeks or the grass flats just offshore (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Similar techniques will often produce freshwater Ghost Shrimp from fresh streams or waterways, including grassy canals and ditches (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Harvest only specimens that are small enough for your seahorses to swallow whole.

Aquarium specimens are available year round. Fish stores carry Ghost Shrimp both as feeders and as oddball pets for freshwater hobbyists (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Culture Instructions:
Ghosts do not thrive in soft water, so for best results keep them in slightly hard to alkaline water (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). Like all crustaceans, these see-through shrimp shed their exoskeletons in order to grow. They may have difficulty molting and become stuck halfway through the process of extricating themselves from their old exoskeletons, particularly in soft water that is deficient in calcium (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). For this reason, I recommend gradually converting your holding tank for Ghost shrimp to brackish conditions, using a high-quality marine salt mix to slowly raise the salinity (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003).

There are at least two distinct types of Ghost Shrimp (very likely more), which are very difficult to distinguish by casual examination (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). One category of Ghost appears to be a true freshwater species. The freshwater Ghosts do not tolerate full-strength saltwater for any length of time but withstand brackish conditions without difficulty (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). The other category of Ghost Shrimp is a brackish species that can be converted to full-strength saltwater, but which also tolerates freshwater for extended periods (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003).

One possible way to determine which type of Ghost Shrimp you have is to examine females that are “in berry” (carrying eggs attached to their swimmerets). The saltwater or brackish Ghosts carry huge numbers of extremely tiny eggs (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). So small are these that individual eggs cannot be seen with the naked eye. The eggs of freshwater Ghosts are said to be much bigger so that separate eggs are visible (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003).

The freshwater Ghosts breed more readily in the aquarium, and the larval shrimp are somewhat easier to raise (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003), but home culture of Ghost Shrimp is not really practical regardless of which variety you obtain.

Feed Ghosts small amounts of dry food once daily. The fine, leftover particles that accumulate on the bottoms of nearly empty flake food containers are great for feeding Ghosts, or crumble fresh flakes between your fingers to create particles of that same consistency (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). Soak these fine flakes in a good enrichment formula and then feed them to the shrimp about 30 minutes before feeding the Ghosts to your seahorses (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). This will gut-load the shrimp and fortify them for maximum nutritional value. (You will actually be able to see the enriched flakes accumulate in the hindgut through the shrimp’s transparent body.)

A 10-15 tank will hold quantities of ghost shrimp, and smaller numbers will do fine in a 5-gallon bucket equipped with an airstone or air-driven foam filter (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). Sponge filters will suffice; change water once a week to maintain water quality (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003).

Comments:
These shrimp are all but transparent, which explains why they are universally called ghost shrimp or glass shrimp. Their exoskeletons are perfectly clear, the underlying muscles nearly transparent, thus clearly revealing their internal organs and GI tract (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). A loss of transparency is a sign of severe stress and poor health; upon death, Ghosts typically turn an opaque white like their namesakes (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). Ghost shrimp are acrobatic swimmers, which propel themselves backward with amazing speed by flexing their tails beneath them.

Fully-grown Ghosts can reach two inches in length, but the best feeder shrimp for the greater seahorses are 1/10 to 1/4 that size, so select your specimens accordingly (Ricketts, Robert T. 2003). Hobbyists estimate that 100 eating-size Ghost shrimp is roughly a one-week supply for two large seahorses. With the high unit cost per shrimp, it’s easy to see than keeping your herd on a staple diet of store-bought ghosts is a very expensive proposition!

GAMMARUS AMPHIPODS

Pros (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Highly nutritious, hard-bodied crustaceans.
· Favorite food of many larger seahorse species.
· Good tolerance for saltwater (marine Gammarus survive indefinitely and even freshwater Gammarus will last until eaten if your sea horses are fond of them).
· Live Gammarus are increasingly available as fish food.
· Starter cultures are widely available through the mail.

Cons (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Slow reproductive rate makes it difficult to raise them in large quantities.
· Slight risk of introducing disease with Gammarus collected in the wild.

Collecting Tips:
Marine Gammarids–Gammarus locusta, a marine amphipod, can often be found in large numbers at the seashore by overturning rocks and coral rubble at low tide (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Also know as scuds or beach-hoppers, scads of the land-dwelling form of these amphipods (Talitrus saltator) can often easily be collected from the mats of seaweed washed up on shore at the tide line. Simply gather up clumps of the freshly deposited seaweed and shake it vigorously over your collecting bucket to dislodge the amphipods.

Freshwater Gammarids–Gammarus fasciatus can be collected from vegetation and leaf litter on the bottoms of ponds and slow-moving streams (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Culture Instructions:
Marine Gammarus will maintain a self-sustaining colony if established in a standard saltwater aquarium with coral gravel and rubble and left undisturbed while their population grows (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Encourage a lush growth of green algae and restock periodically.

Under the right conditions, these small, shrimplike crustaceans mate and reproduce readily in captivity. Provide them with a lush green mat of Ulva macroalgae as natural habitat, and they will soon take up residence and establish a breeding colony of amphipods (Indo-Pacific Sea Farms, 2003). Provide them with low light levels, good aeration, and a pinch of flake food twice a week and you’ll soon have a growing population of Gammarus to dole out to your seahorses (Indo-Pacific Sea Farms, 2003).

Freshwater Gammarus can be cultured in a plastic wading pool or similar spacious receptacle equipped with an airstone (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Feed sparingly with chopped raw spinach, Spirulina, or a pinch of dry fish food. Include plenty of algae-covered rocks and driftwood for shelter, and position where strong direct sunlight will produce heavy algal growth (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Comments:
To feed these 1/4″-5/16″ crustaceans to your fish, siphon water from around the rocks, shells, and gravel in the culture tank and strain it through a net to separate the Gammarus from the debris (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Commonly known as side-swimmers, these hard-shelled amphipods have a herky-jerky, sidestroke swimming style that most large sea horses find irresistible (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Their seemingly frantic movements and tendency to dart out from hiding suddenly seldom fail to trigger a sea horse’s feeding response, and this is one food hungry Hippocampines will actively pursue and search out. Some sea horses will even accept freshly killed or dead Gammarus (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). An ideal food: substantial enough to be your sea horses’ staple diet, if you can obtain it in sufficient quantity!

When mating, the male amphipod carries the smaller female grasped between its legs, a breeding method known as amplexus (Biology of Amphipods, 1996). Thus, when you see pairs swimming together while locked in amplexus, it’s a sure sign your amphipod colony is growing. The female subsequently releases the fertilized eggs into a ventral brood chamber where the unattached eggs are held by extra branches of her walking legs and incubated during development (Biology of Amphipods, 1996).

Unlike crab and shrimp larvae, baby amphipods are not released as zoea that develop into adults after several stages of metamorphosis (Biology of Amphipods, 1996). Instead, the young look like miniature versions of their parents when released, and some species even show parental care of their young after they leave the brood chamber (Biology of Amphipods, 1996).

Different types of amphipods move differently, depending on the arrangement of their legs. Most species can walk upright, scuttling along by using most of their thoracic legs, but this is a slow, rather cumbersome method of locomotion (Biology of Amphipods, 1996). Practicing their sidestroke and swimming along using three pairs of pleopods is much faster (Biology of Amphipods, 1996). But the true specialty of amphipods is the tail-flip, a rapid escape response where the abdomen flicks the animal away after the uropods are dug into the substrate (Biology of Amphipods, 1996). Terrestrial amphipods (scuds, sand fleas, beach hoppers, etc.) are especially adept at this startling maneuver. It is this variety of frantic movements and escape maneuvers that triggers the seahorse’s feeding response and makes amphipods so irresistible to Hippocampus. Seahorses love to hunt them!

As we’ll see below, Caprellids cannot use any of the amphipod’s usual methods of locomotion. They are restricted to slow-motion somersaults and painstakingly stepping along like an inchworm.

CAPRELLID AMPHIPODS (Caprella acutifrons)

Pros:
· Relished by all the greater seahorses.
· Excellent nutritional value.
· Feed-and-forget: survive indefinitely in saltwater until eaten.

Cons:
· Difficult to obtain.
· Preferred habitat is branching, fernlike hydroid colonies.
· Cannot be cultured in quantities.

Collection Tips:
Large numbers of Caprellid skeleton shrimp colonize fouling growths and organisms such as sponges, tunicates, and especially large colonial hydroids such as Obelia (Rudloe, 1971). At some times of year, these sessile organisms will be alive with swarms of skeleton shrimp. The best way to collect them is thus to look for such fouling growths on man-made objects (docks, wharves, jetties, breakwaters, buoys, etc.) and harvest the sessile animals complete with all the Caprellids inhabiting them (Rudloe, 1977). (The skeleton shrimp attach themselves tightly to such growths with grasping hooks and they will cling tightly to the hydroid colony and come along for the ride when you carefully place it in your collecting bucket.)

Culture Instructions:
They cannot really be cultured in any numbers, but you might try placing a heavily colonized clump of hydroids or two in a refugium and hope for the best.

Comments:
Skeleton shrimp are amphipods like Gammarus, but the Caprellids are very different in habits and appearance from Gammarids (The Caprellid, 2004). Whereas Gammarus are flat-bodied and seek shelter beneath vegetation and coral rubble, Caprella amphipods are thin and wiry (i.e., skeletal) and display themselves openly (The Caprellid, 2004). They have a long, slender thorax and almost no abdomen (The Caprellid, 2004). The spindly brown skeleton shrimp (Caprella acutifrons) are in constant slow motion, bending, stretching, somersaulting, and flexing languidly as they forage throughout the large hydroid colony they inhabit, gleaning diatoms from the stems and polyps and snatching up zooplankton (Rudloe, 1971). Thanks to their transparent bodies one can easily see the food particles streaming down their gut (The Caprellid, 2004). They owe their agility and acrobatic antics to the incredible flexibility of their slender, wire-like bodies and the fact that they have terminal hooks at their tail end and large grasping claws (gnathopods) like a praying mantis at the other end (Rudloe, 1971). Like a mantis, they often assume a prayerful attitude, slowly and reverently bobbing, then bowing their heads piously while clasping their “hands” together at their chests (Rudloe, 1971). They have two pairs of antennae and can turn their heads from side to side. Solemnly, they sway side to side, nodding and bowing down with great dignity.

Periodically they will interrupt their penitent meditation to begin actively foraging, and then they move altogether differently, with a unique method of locomotion that seems totally out of place in such clumsy looking creatures. Displaying surprising agility, they bend forward into a loop in order to get a good grip with their front claws. Then they swing their entire body over their heads, tail first, until their terminal hooks can grab a new hold, allowing them to release their grip with their claws and repeat the entire procedure (Rudloe, 1971). They are accomplished acrobats, advancing themselves end-over-end in a series of cartwheels and somersaults in this unorthodox manner. With the nimbleness and flexibility of a contortionist, skeleton shrimp can actually swing from limb to limb in this fashion (Rudloe, 1971), and it’s a comical sight to see them moving through the stems and branches and polyps of a bushy hydroid like a troop of drunken spider monkeys!

Thousands upon thousands of these tiny shrimp many inhabit a large clump of hydroids, and at first glance the entire hydroid colony appears to be writhing and crawling and pulsing with an eerie, unnatural life of its own (Rudloe, 1977). It is the tantalizing movement of these multitudes that apparently makes skeleton shrimp so irresistible to many fishes, and Jack Rudloe has often described how tossing a hydroid colony swarming with Caprellids into a seahorse tank will trigger a feeding frenzy worthy of a school of bloodthirsty sharks:

“Fish love to eat caprellid amphipods. Often we would tear off a clump of hydroids, toss it in the aquarium, and see even the most finicky reluctant feeders go wild and gobble up the tiny crustaceans as fast as they could pick them out of the hydroids. Sea horses especially love to eat them” ((Rudloe 1977, p100).

GRASS SHRIMP/RIVER SHRIMP

Pros (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· A highly nutritious, natural food for large seahorses.
· Available from bait shops or aquarium stores in some areas.
· Can be collected locally by many aquarists.
· Good tolerance for saltwater: marine grass shrimp are a “feed-and-forget” food and freshwater grass and river shrimp last surprisingly long as well.

Cons (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Suitable only for the largest specimens.
· Cannot be cultured in home aquaria.
· Marine grass shrimp are unavailable to inland aquarists.

Collecting Tips:
Grass shrimp can be collected easily at low tide by vigorously shaking clumps of floating seaweed into a bucket of seawater, or by dragging a small seine or large aquarium net through tidal creeks or the grass flats just offshore (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Similar techniques will often produce freshwater grass shrimp and river shrimp from freshwater streams or waterways (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Remember, keep only shrimp that are small enough for your seahorses to swallow whole.

Comments:
“Grass shrimp” is an all-purpose term loosely applied to several species of small marine shrimp as well as the young of a variety of larger shrimp (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). River shrimp are simply the freshwater equivalent of marine grass shrimp.

All in all, these crustaceans are ideal foods for the bigger breeds of seahorses. Just be sure to select shrimp of suitable size for your seahorses (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Seahorses are so fond of these shrimp that they often attack specimens that are far too big to swallow. They will attempt to break the back of the shrimp by snapping repeatedly at the carapace. If they are successful in severing the abdomen from the cephalothorax, the seahorses will then slurp up the tail section and head half of the shrimp separately. Or should their victim be so large it cannot even be swallowed in sections, they will snick out mouthfuls of the soft tissue exposed inside the abdomen or thorax. At times, several seahorses will gang up on one big shrimp this way, like a pack of lions teaming up to bring down a water buffalo that’s too big for any one of them to tackle alone. Under the right circumstances, a sort of slow-motion feeding frenzy may then ensue, with the seahorses playing tug-of-war over the pieces of their prize.

Grass shrimp that are too large to be overcome by such tactics may survive to become long-term residents of the seahorse tank, coexisting with their reluctant tankmates in a sort of uneasy truce. Such die-hard shrimp provide a useful service as scavengers from then on.

We tend to think of our seahorses as gentle, nonaggressive creatures that wouldn’t harm a fly, but in reality they are surprisingly fierce predators in their own right. To small crustaceans, seahorses are the tigers of the grassblade jungle, striking without warning from ambush and devouring anything of the right size that moves.

BRINE SHRIMP (Artemia spp.)

Pros (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Adult Artemia are readily available from your fish store or through the mail.
· Easily raised from cysts to provide nauplii of all sizes and stages of development.
· Excellent tolerance for saltwater: feed and forget–survives until eaten.
· Easy to gut-load and enrich.
· Accepted greedily by most seahorses (except Hippocampus reidi and H. ingens).

Cons (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Poor food value–good source of protein, but lacking in other essential nutrients.
· Must be fortified or enriched to increase nutritional content.
· Cannot be used as staple diet.

Collecting Tips:
None

Culture Instructions:
Specific gravity: 1.020-1.026; pH: 8.0-9.0;
Temperature: 77 degrees F (25 degrees C)

An easy way to raise small quantities of brine shrimp is to set up a 10-20 gallon tank in a location where it receives natural sunlight to promote the growth of green algae, and provide gentle aeration using a length of airline tubing as a bubbler (avoid fine bubbles and the use of airstones; Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon of eggs on the surface of the water. The nauplii will hatch 24-36 hour later, and the day after they emerge, they can be fed sparingly with various additives and enrichment products (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Adjust the amount so a slight haze barely clouds the water for a few hours each day. Do not feed again until the water is crystal clear, and avoid overfeeding at all costs. Maintain constant aeration to keep the food in suspension, and feed very small amounts fairly often — never a large quantity at any given time (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). The first generation of brine shrimp will reach maturity after 2-3 weeks, and the culture will then be self-sustaining (Daleco Aquarists Supply Manual, 1995). Add more eggs as needed to supplement natural reproduction and bolster the population of brine shrimp. Top off the tank with freshwater regularly to make up for evaporation, and replace about 25% of the culture water on a monthly basis (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

It’s a good idea to set up 2 or more culture tanks for adult Artemia at the same time so you can harvest a little from each culture and prevent the population of shrimp in any one tank from being depleted to the extent it can no longer sustain itself.

Rearing Artemia this way makes it easy to select nauplii at just the proper stage of development and size for your sea horses (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Comments:
Brine shrimp are no doubt the most widely used live foods for sea horses. They are convenient, always available, easy to hatch and raise, and adults can be bought by the pint or quart at many fish stores (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

However, commercially raised brine shrimp have one big drawback. By the time they are purchased and released in the aquarium, they usually have not eaten for several days, and starved brine shrimp are nutritionally barren. It is therefore imperative that brine shrimp be fortified before they are fed to your sea horses. (As discussed earlier, unfortified adult brine shrimp are useful for feeding to captive-bred seahorses on a staple diet of enriched frozen Mysis on their fasting days precisely because the brine shrimp have nonexistent nutritional value.)

Fortunately, brine shrimp are filter feeders and will take in whatever is suspended in the water with them that has a manageable particle size. This can be yeast cells; unicellular algae; rotifers; micronized rice bran, whey, wheat flour, or egg yolk; dried Spirulina algae; water-soluble vitamin and mineral formulations designed for marine fish; or whatever else the aquarist cares to add to their culture water (Daleco Aquarists Supply Manual, 1995).

I recommend using one of the concentrated food additives or enrichment products that have recently been developed specifically for mariculturists. The best additives are rich in lipids, especially highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA), and vitamins such as stabilized Vitamin C and cyanocobalmin (B-12) (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Adding such enrichment products to a 6-ounce portion of brine shrimp, and then allowing at least 12 hours for the shrimp to ingest it can fortify store-bought adult Artemia (Giwojna, Oct. 1996)

Liquid vitamin formulations can also be added, and the ability to enrich their lipid and vitamin content this way allows us to treat brine shrimp as animated vitamin pills for seahorses (Lawrence, 1998). The savvy seahorse keeper should regard enriched Artemia as bio-encapsulated food for his charges and take full advantage of every opportunity to fortify the shrimp (Lawrence, 1998).

The survival rate of marine fish fry improves dramatically when they are fed lipid-enriched brine shrimp nauplii, and the importance of fortifying Artemia in this manner cannot be overemphasized (Forrest Young, pers. com.). In fact, the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco has successfully raised Hippocampus erectus from birth to maturity on a diet consisting solely of brine shrimp (Herald and Rakowicz, 1951). For best results, however, brine shrimp should be considered only a dietary supplement, with of the bulk of your sea horses’ diet consisting of hard-bodied crustaceans such as Mysids, feeder shrimp or Gammarids.

MARINE COPEPODS

Pros:
· Naturally high levels of essentially fatty acids.
· Natural food that forms a large portion of the seahorses’ diet in the wild.
· Elicits a strong feeding response.
· Perfect first food for seahorse fry.
· Feed-and-forget: marine species survive until eaten and will colonize live rock, filters and refugia.
· Starter cultures readily available.
· Easily collected by hobbyists with access to the seashore.

Cons:
· Complex life cycle complicates home culture.
· Many species too small to interest adult seahorses.
· Some species are parasitic — can be difficult to tell the good guys from the bad boys.

Collecting Tips:
Free-swimming copepods can easily be collected by anyone who lives within a reasonable distance of the ocean (in parts of the sea, larval calanoid copepods comprise the bulk of the zooplankton). Simply tow a plankton net (an elongated conical net made of fine material) slowly behind a boat in an area well away from possible sources of pollution, stopping periodically to empty its contents into a collecting container. (A mesh size of 250-500 microns will collect ‘pods that are about the right eating size for medium seahorses.) Cover the collecting bucket with a damp towel to keep it cool during the heat of the day and provide aeration to make sure the plankters stay alive until you get home.

Culture Instructions:
Suitable for batch culture with greenwater (phytoplankton). See the rearing chapter for complete directions for culturing copepod nauplii.

Comments:
Providing copepod nauplii as the first food for pelagic seahorse fry results in faster growth and often dramatically increases survivorship.

Copepods are an extremely diverse group of Crustacea with more than 10,000 known species with different lifestyles filling a great variety of environmental niches, both marine and freshwater (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000). There are three major groups of free-living copepods that are useful in aquaculture (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000): the Calanoida (primarily free-swimming planktonic animals), the Cyclopoida (either planktonic or demersal), and the Harpacticoida (entirely benthic).

Copepods undergo a remarkably complex life cycle. After hatching from the egg, they pass through six distinct nauplius stages, undergo a metamorphosis that completely transforms their body shape, and then go through six additional copepodid stages, culminating with the mature adult (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000). The first nauplius stages have only 3 pairs of appendages, which are used for locomotion and feeding (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000). The 6th and final naupliar stage molts into the first of the copepodid stages, and important development marked by major morphological changes (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000). The emerging copepodid larvae resemble the adults in large part. With the increasing number of body segments in the copepodid, more of their appendages become fully functional (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000). After the fifth copepodid molt adulthood is reached and the mature copepods are able to reproduce. There are two different sexes and reproduction is sexual (Dürbaum and Künnemann, 2000).

Growth is very rapid, with most species going from the embryo to mature adult in 10-12 days at 25-degrees C. The free-swimming nauplii are attracted to light, becoming less phototropic as they mature, until the adults begin to settle and attach to the substrate. As adults they swim less, remaining attached to substrates for anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes at a time.

GULF KILLIFISH FRY (Fundulus grandis)

Pros:
· Great food value: high in protein and lipids — complete nutritional package.
· Extremely hardy in the aquarium.
· Feed-and-forget — last indefinitely in full-strength saltwater.
· Easy to breed and raise from eggs.
· Available from bait shops in many coastal areas.

Cons:
· Difficult to acquire for inland aquarists.
· Seasonal availability.
· Not eaten by all seahorses.

Collecting Tips:
In most locations they are most abundant in late spring and early summer. Gulf Killifish are best collected using minnow traps baited with crushed crab or bread and positioned in likely areas such as brackish streams, tidal creeks, and grassy ditches and canals. They can also be taken using large dip nets or small seines in the same waterways or from shallow brackish backwaters in salt marshes and grassy tidal areas.

Culture Instructions:
Specific Gravity: 1.011-1.019 (15-25 ppt)
pH 7.6-8.0
Temperature: 75-degrees F (24 C)

Sharyl Crossley has been very successful at culturing Gulf Killifish fry for seahorses using the following methods. Adults are kept in a bare-bottom, 30-gallon breeder tank at a ration of 5 males to 3 females (5 M: 3 F). Sharyl notes that the ratio isn’t really that important as long as you maintain multiples of each sex. The male killis do their part by displaying constantly while breeding (helping to entice the females) and Crossley finds that more females translates to more eggs. She uses an external bio-wheel power filter for good circulation and filtration, along with an air stone for extra oxygenation and surface agitation and a heater to keep the tank from falling below 72 F. Sharyl maintains a weekly water changing schedule and reports that Fundulus grandis are VERY hardy fish that seem to thrive on a little benign neglect (Sharyl Crossley, pers. com.).

The eggs are laid and then collected in a funnel trap that floats around in the tank, and approximately every other day the eggs are collected from the funnel and transferred to a hatchery bottle (Sharyl Crossley, pers. com.). The hatchery is basically just a 2-liter bottle filled with 15-25 ppt saltwater (sg = 1.011-1.019) and equipped with a bubbler. There are usually fry in the hatchery bottle every other day, which are collected using a 500um sieve and moved to a grow out tank with a sponge filter until they are fed to the seahorses (Sharyl Crossley, pers. com.). A minimum of 50-100 killifish fry are usually produced every other day using this technique (Sharyl Crossley, pers. com.).

Sharyl reports the newly hatched killi fry are about 5-mm long and are great for feeding larger seahorse fry and pipefish. They are easily grown out for a week or two using daily feedings of Artemia nauplii or other standard fry foods until they reach a suitable size for larger seahorses (Sharyl Crossley, pers. com.).

Comments:
When it comes to feeding seahorses, Gulf Killifish fry are superior to livebearer fry in every respect. They are smaller than livebearer fry, making them more bite-sized morsels for most seahorses. In fact, they can be cultured to any desired size in order to tailor them to any seahorses from small fry to juveniles to fully-grown adults. That makes them suitable prey for the smallest species such as Hippocampus breviceps and H. tuberculatus or true giants like over-grown Pots (H. abdominalis) alike. As a result, killifish fry are generally eaten much more readily than newborn guppies or mollies.

Common known as Mud Minnows, these killifish are much tougher and far more adaptable aquarium specimens than tropical livebearers (Poecilids). Not only are they easier to keep, they thrive in full-strength saltwater and can be produced in much greater numbers. For example, with just one tank of breeders and eight adult Fundulus grandis, the Crossley culture method typically produces several hundred killifish fry every week!

POECILID LIVEBEARER FRY (newborn Gambusia, Guppies, Mollies, Platys, Swordtails, Japanese Medaka fry
etc.)

Pros (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Excellent food value: high in protein, lipids, and other essential nutrients–a complete package of vitamins and minerals.
· Available in all pet shops and aquarium stores.
· Easy to breed and maintain at home.

Cons (Giwojna, Oct. 1996):
· Poor tolerance for saltwater (except for mollies adapted to brackish conditions).
· Not acceptable to all sea horses–refused by many specimens.
· Slow rate of reproduction limits usefulness.

Collecting Tips:
None

Culture Instructions:
Set up breeding groups (trios or harems consisting of several mature females for every male) in a standard aquarium for tropical fish (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Feed and maintain exactly as if keeping them as pets. Mollies require a vegetable-based diet and do best with a little non-iodized salt or sea salt added to their water (about 1/4 teaspoon per gallon). Isolate obviously pregnant females in breeding traps to prevent cannibalism of the fry (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

Comments:
Offer your sea horses only a few fry at a time, since the delicate newborns won’t last long in saltwater. The fry should be used immediately after they are born (Giwojna, Oct. 1996), since they grow rapidly and may be too large to eat a few days after birth (remember sea horses must swallow them whole). Newborn guppies and Gambusia are smallest and the easiest for sea horses to handle (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). Molly fry are bigger, but they can be gradually acclimated to brackish or even full-strength saltwater, allowing them to survive indefinitely in your sea horse tank (Giwojna, Oct. 1996).

In my experience, the biggest problem with newborn fishes is that many sea horses simply refuse to eat them. The fry tend to hug the surface, where sea horses are unaccustomed to feeding, and some Hippocampines are put off by their size (Giwojna, Oct. 1996). However, some large sea horses attack them voraciously, and the San Antonio Aquarium in Texas has successfully maintained sea horses on an exclusive diet of newborn mollies (Herald and Rakowicz, 1951). Likewise, from France, Thierry Schmidt reports good success raising Hippocampus kuda, supplementing their diet with newborn guppies as the juveniles grow (Schmidt, 1995).

In short, if you can spare the time and expense necessary to provide your seahorse with a varied diet of choice live foods, that is an excellent option. Indeed, combining hardy farm-raised seahorses with a staple diet of nutritious live foods can be a recipe for success. Neil Garrick-Maidment is a very successful breeder in the UK who believes strongly in providing live food for his seahorses. He reports keeping captive-bred seahorses for as long as seven years and 3 months simply by maintaining excellent water quality and providing them with a good live diet consisting largely of Mysis shrimp (Garrick-Maidment, pers. com.).

©Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce is granted by the author (Peter Giwojna) for your personal use only and is not transferable without written permission by Ocean Rider and the original author.
[Close quote]

Okay, hobbyists, that’s the rundown on live foods that may be useful as occasional treats for your seahorses (or regular meals for your finicky red female). You may want to consider culturing the red volcano shrimp from Hawaii or Gammarus amphipods or the live Mysis at home, among other suitable live prey.

Good luck!

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support

©Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce is granted by the author (Peter Giwojna) for your personal use only and is not transferable without written permission by Ocean Rider and the original author.

Please contact the author ([email protected]) immediately if you notice the material from these lessons posted on the Internet on any websites other than Ocean Rider (seahorse.com).

Dear Kristen:

All my thanks for your collaboration with the molecular biologist and for posting about the potential of zinc for treating gas bubble disease in Hippocampus. It would be a great boon for home hobbyists to have a non-prescription alternative to Diamox/acetazolamide, especially an item that can be obtained inexpensively from any health food outlets that carry vitamin and mineral supplements.

Please keep us posted when any more information is available regarding the correct dosage for treating with zinc and the preferred form of zinc for best results. This is the first time I have heard about this treatment option and I am eager to learn more about it!

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support

Dear hobbyist:

At the first sign of an infection could be vibriosis, it’s important to isolate the affected seahorse so that the rest of the herd isn’t exposed to the same pathogens, and to begin treating the seahorse aggressively in isolation with potent broad-spectrum antibiotics immediately for at least 10 days. The medications that are most useful in resolving Vibrio infections are chloramphenicol (i.e., Chloromycetin), which you probably will not be able to obtain, enrofloxin (brand name Baytril), which is another prescription antibiotic that may also be difficult for you to obtain. Of the antibiotics that are readily available to hobbyists, tetracycline or oxytetracycline would be the best (but ONLY if they can be administered orally), or gentamicin (a very potent gram-negative negative antibiotic) would be a good alternative, or a combination of doxycycline + kanamycin can also be effective in treating such infections, all of which can be obtained from National Fish Pharmaceuticals without a prescription.

If you don’t have a suitable hospital tank or quarantine tank up and running at this time, you can set up a makeshift hospital tank as follows:

<Open quote>
The Hospital Ward or Quarantine Tank

Live sand and live rock are not necessary in a hospital tank. A bare-bottomed aquarium with plenty of hitching posts will suffice for a hospital ward or Quarantine Tank (QT). Ideally, the hospital tank should have one or more foam filters for biofiltration along with a small external filter, which can easily be removed from the tank during treatment but which can hold activated carbon or polyfilter pads when it’s time to pull the meds out. It’s important for the hospital ward to include enough hitching posts so that the seahorse won’t feel vulnerable or exposed during treatment. Aquarium safe, inert plastic plants or homemade hitching posts fashioned from polypropylene rope or twine that has been unraveled and anchored at one end are excellent for a hospital tank. No aquarium reflector is necessary. Ambient room light will suffice. (Bright lights can breakdown and inactivate certain medications and seahorses are more comfortable and feel more secure under relatively dim lighting.)

So just a bare tank with hitching posts is all you need for your hospital ward. No heater. No reflector. No lights. No substrate. You can even do without the sponge filters or external filter in your case, just adding a couple of airstones to provide surface agitation and oxygenation. That’s it.

In a pinch, a clean 5-gallon plastic bucket (new and unused, NOT an old scrub bucket!) can serve as a makeshift hospital tank. It should be aerated and equipped with hitching posts and perhaps a heater, but nothing else. This makes a useful substitute when the Quarantine Tank is occupied or in use and a seahorse needs treatment.

Stay on top of water quality in the hospital tank/bucket with water changes as often as needed during treatment, and and when you are treating the occupants for a health problem, re-dose with the medication(s) according to directions after each water change.
<Close quote>

Here is some additional information regarding marine ulcer disease to give you a better idea of the type of problem I believe you may be dealing with:

<Open quote>
MARINE ULCER DISEASE, A.K.A. ULCERATIVE DERMATITIS, A.K.A. HEMORRHAGIC SEPTICEMIA, A.K.A. “FLESH-EATING BACTERIA”

Marine ulcer disease is a particularly nasty type of infection that most hobbyists have come to know as “flesh-eating bacteria,” and indeed it can often be attributed to bacteria, most notably gram-negative Vibrio or Pseudomonas species (Giwojna, Nov. 2003). Vibrio in marine fish is the equivalent of the Aeromonas bacteria that plague freshwater fishes (Dixon 1999; Basleer 2000), causing external hemorrhagic ulcers (bloody lesions). Vibriosis is probably the most common bacterial infection of captive seahorses and one of the most difficult to eradicate from your system. Vibrio bacteria are motile gram negative rods, which measure about 0.5 X 1.5 micrometers (Prescott, 2001). When grown on suitable media they appear as shiny, creamy colored colonies (Prescott, 2001).

Marine ulcer disease or hemorrhagic septicemia can manifest itself in a number of forms. The most common of these are the external hemorrhagic (bloody) ulcers, which appear as localized open wounds on the body (Dixon, 1999). It may be helpful to think of this condition as a form of skin rot. The first symptoms are usually small, discolored areas of skin that often become red and inflamed (Giwojna, Nov. 2003). These may become large bloody spots or lesions (the characteristic ulcers) as the disease progresses, leading to sloughing of the skin and localized swelling (Giwojna, Nov. 2003). (I have found that many times hobbyists have a tendency to dismiss these ulcers as “heater burns,” especially when they appear on the flanks or pouch of the seahorse, and to delay appropriate treatment on the basis of this misdiagnosis. Avoid this all-to-common mistake!) In severe cases, the underlying musculature also becomes infected, and the rapid tissue erosion that can result is one of the most alarming aspects of ulcer disease. At this advanced stage, all too often, the infected fish can longer be saved (Giwojna, Nov. 2003).

Badly infected fishes may develop a distended, fluid-filled abdomen due to internal bacterial infection (septicemia) of the kidneys, liver or intestinal tract (Dixon, 1999). This disrupts the normal circulation of the blood and lymph, causing fluids to accumulate in the intestine and abdominal cavity (Dixon, 1999).

The most dangerous form of hemorrhagic septicemia occurs when the bacteria spread internally and become septic, infecting the blood (Dixon, 1999). The bacteria release toxins into the bloodstream, making it the most virulent of these infections (Dixon, 1999). This insidious form of the disease does not produce the telltale external ulcers, and acute infections can kill quickly with little warning due to the lack of outward signs (Dixon, 1999). Affected fish become listless and lethargic (Dixon, 1999), which may be hard to pick up on with seahorses. Respiration is rapid and seahorses usually darken in color and go off their feed. These behavioral indicators are especially difficult to detect in seahorses due to their lazy lifestyle and habit of changing colors frequently. Seahorses may succumb to the acute form of this disease before the aquarist realizes anything is amiss, and hobbyist often ascribe such mysterious losses to Sudden Death Syndrome.

In seahorses, this disease sometimes takes the form of bilateral edema of the periorbital tissue (Bull and Mitchell, 2002, p19). The eyes themselves are not affected, as in popeye or Exopthalmia; rather, the tissue around both eyes swells up. The eyes are thus unaffected but are encircled by rings of swollen tissue. Hobbyists have described this condition to me by saying that their seahorse had developed “doughnut eyes.” These characteristic doughnut eyes are often accompanied by swelling of the soft tissue around the tube snout (Bull and Mitchell, 2002, p19). Some cases develop this peculiar facial edema as well as the usual skin ulcers and tissue erosion (Bull and Mitchell, 2002, p19).

Hemorrhagic septicemia or marine ulcer disease can be a very stubborn and difficult infection to treat, especially when it is due to Vibrio and the disease is acute or advanced. However, if the condition is detected early and treatment is begun when the discolored patches of skin or other symptoms are first noticed, antibacterial agents are often helpful (Giwojna, Nov. 2003). The professional aquarists treat this disease aggressively, using bivalent Vibrio vaccines, immunostimulants such as a beta-glucan, and injections of antibiotics (Bull and Mitchell, 2002, p19).

Aside from administering beta glucan (a primary ingredient in Vibrance) orally, such measures are beyond the grasp of we home hobbyists. We must make do by treating the affected specimens in isolation using wide spectrum antibiotics such as chloramphenicol, enrofloxin (brand name Baytril), tetracycline antibiotics (i.e., tetracycline or oxytetracycline) if and only if they can be a minister orally, gentamicin sulfate, doxycycline, kanamycin, neomycin sulfate, sulfonamide or streptomycin. In mild cases that are detected early, Furan2 or Nitrofuracin Green can sometimes also be helpful. As with other bacterial infections, lowering the water temperature during the course of treatment can help a great deal. This is your best course of action when you are confident that the problem is due to a bacterial infection, such as Pseudomonas or Vibriosis (Giwojna, Nov. 2003).

Chloramphenicol is the treatment of choice. It can be given orally or used as a bath (Prescott, 2001c). Therapeutic baths lasting 10-20 hours are administered in a chloramphenicol solution consisting of 40 mg per liter of water (Prescott, 2001c). If the seahorse is still eating, the chloramphenicol can also be bioencapsulated by gut loading feeder shrimp or ghost shrimp with flake food soaked in the antibiotic solution. Even if the affected seahorses does not eat, feeding medicated shrimp to its tankmates is a good way to help prevent this contagious disease from spreading to the healthy seahorses (Prescott, 2001c).
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All things considered, I would say that chloramphenicol (i.e. Chloromycetin) is the treatment of choice for marine ulcer disease (i.e., flesh-eating bacteria) and most Vibrio infections, in general. It is effective both as a bath for prolonged immersion or when administered orally. If the affected seahorse is no longer eating, then administering the chloramphenicol to the treatment tank would be a good option for you if your other seahorses develop any symptoms of this disease.

The treatment protocol for Chloramphenicol or Chloromycetin is as follows:

Chloramphenicol can be used to treat Vibriosis at 40 mg/ litre of water (which comes out to about 150 milligrams per gallon) in a bath for 10-20 hours. It is important to watch the quality of the water, and if it starts to become turbid, the water must be changed. It is best to treat in a separate tank. In stubborn cases, a series of such baths may be necessary to resolve the problem, in which case a complete water change should be performed before the medication is redosed.

Chloramphenicol can also be used as an additive to the feed, if the fish are still eating (all to often in a major infection they will refuse to eat, but this treatment may be most useful in preventing the horizontal spread of the infection). When used as an addition to the feed use 500 mg per 100 gram of feed. (In the case of seahorses, the flake food medicated with chloramphenicol in this way would first be bio-encapsulated in live feeder shrimp, which would then in turn be fed to the seahorses.)

If you do obtain the chloramphenicol, be sure to be very careful when handling it. Remember, in a few rare individuals exposure to chloramphenicol can cause a potentially fatal side effect (aplastic anemia). These are rare cases and almost always involve patients who were being treated with the medication, but I would use gloves when handling it as a precaution and if you crush crush up tablets of chloramphenicol, be very careful not to inhale any of the power.

Because of this side effect, which affects one in 100,000 humans, chloramphenicol is no longer available as a medication for fishes and can therefore be difficult to obtain.

Baytril is another good antibiotic for treating ulcerative dermatitis and tail rot, but it is a prescription medication that you would need to obtain from your family Vet. It would be your next best option if you cannot obtain the chloramphenicol.

Baytril (Enrofloxacin) is a powerful new broad-spectrum antibiotic that increasingly used to treat infections of the urinary tract, skin, prostate, gastrointestinal system, liver, ears, and lungs in humans. It is affective against both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria and is widely used in aquaculture to treat marine fish. It belongs to a relatively new class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, which are effective against a wide variety of bacteria, and is now being used in the aquaculture industry to treat bacterial infections in valuable fish. In liquid form, enrofloxin (Baytril) can be administered either by injection at around 10mg/kg bodyweight e.o.d. or as a bath at 30ppm for 1 hour daily for 5 days.

The Baytril can also be administered orally by tube feeding it to the seahorse, which is helpful when the seahorse is not eating, but it is a stressful procedure for the seahorse. Here are the instructions for administering the Baytril orally, again courtesy of Ann at the org:

ENROFLOXACIN Oral Dosage and Preparation Instructions
Active Ingredient: Enrofloxacin
Indication: bacterial infection
Brandnames: Baytril
The following information is based on the most commonly available tablet sizes for Enrofloxacin/Baytril
available in the US and abroad and an average sized seahorse of approximately 10 grams.
Tube feed the seahorse 0.1mg of Enrofloxacin once a day for 10 days.
Day 1 – 10 of Treatment
• Crush 1/4 of a 68mg or 50mg tablet into a fine powder.
• Use a mini-blender or small hand-blender to thoroughly mix the powder with marine water. Mix 1/4 of a
68mg tablet with 85mL of marine water. Mix 1/4 of a 50mg tablet with 62.5mL of marine water.
• Fill a small syringe with 0.5mL of the solution.
• Tube feed the seahorse just as if you were force-feeding the pony to provide nutritional support.
• Throw out the unused Enrofloxacin and marine water solution. You will need to make new solution daily
because Enrofloxacin breaks down quickly in saltwater causing it to become completely ineffective by the
next day.
Important Notes:
Enrofloxacin is available only by prescription from a veterinarian.
Enrofloxacin International Version – Tablets are produced in 15mg, 50gm, 150mg, & a 2.5% injectable solution
Enrofloxacin US Version – Tablets are produced in 22.7mg, 68mg, 136mg, & a 2.27% injectable solution
If you are able to ascertain the exact weight of your seahorse you may want to adjust the dosage as
necessary to get the most benefit from the medication. In such an instance you would dose Enrofloxacin
at 0.01mg of the medication per gram of body weight.
A veterinarian who works regularly with small exotics will be familiar with the proper way to dilute
injectable Enrofloxacin solution to fit your needs.

If you do not have access to prescription medications such as chloramphenicol or enrofloxacin (Baytril), then you should consider using tetracycline or oxytetracycline instead, since they are readily available to hobbyists, but ONLY if they are administered orally. (The tetracycline antibiotics are useless in saltwater, because calcium and magnesium bind to the medications and deactivate them when the pH is 7.6 or above.) So the only way tetracycline antibiotics can be used effectively with seahorses is to gutload feeder shrimp with the medication or, alternatively, to soak frozen Mysis in the proper concentration of the medication, and then feed the medicated Mysis to the seahorses. Obviously, this is only an option if the affected seahorse is still eating, which is often not the case.

If you can obtain live adult brine shrimp, the feeder shrimp can be gut loaded with the tetracycline antibiotics and then fed to the seahorses. In that case, the best way to administer the tetracycline would be to bioencapsulate it in live adult brine shrimp and then to feed the medicated shrimp to the ailing seahorse.

Many times the most effective way to administer antibiotics orally is by bioencapsulating or gutloading them in live shrimp, which are then fed to the seahorses. The easiest way to gutload antibiotics is to bioencapsulate them in live adult brine shrimp (Artemia spp.), as described below. The recommended dosage of antibiotic for this varies between 100-250 mg per liter or about 400-1000 mg per gallon of water. Stay within that range and you should be all right.

In the case of tetracycline, I recommend using 500 mg per gallon of freshwater for bioencapsulating the antibiotic in adult brine shrimp. Tetracycline is a photosensitive drug, so keep the container of freshwater covered to shield it from the light or in a relatively dark area of the room while you are gutloading the brine shrimp.

If the antibiotic you are using comes in tablet form, crush it into a very fine powder (you may have to use a household blender to get it fine enough) and dissolve it in freshwater at the dosage suggested above. Soak the adult shrimp in freshwater treated with the antibiotic for 15-30 minutes and then feed the medicated shrimp to your seahorses immediately. (Don’t let your pumps and filters “eat” all the brine shrimp!)

The brine shrimp are soaked in freshwater, not saltwater, because in theory the increased osmotic pressure of the freshwater helps the antibiotic solution move into their bodies via osmosis. But in fact nobody knows for sure whether the antibiotic is diffusing into the brine shrimp or they are ingesting it in very fine particles (brine shrimp are filter feeders and will take in whatever is suspended in the water with them) or whether the brine shrimp merely become coated with the antibiotic while they are soaking in it. But that’s not important — all that really matters is that gut-loading adult brine shrimp with medications this way is effective.

The antibiotics I would recommend for gutloading in your case are tetracycline or oxytetracycline. Tetracycline is widely available for aquarium use, so you should easily be able to get a product at your LFS in which the primary ingredient is tetracycline, such as Maracyn-TC by Mardel Labs or Tetracycline MS by Fishvet. These products generally include 250 mg capsules or tablets of tetracycline, or packets of 500 mg tetracycline powder, which would make it easy for you to determine the right amount to add to 1 gallon of freshwater in which to soak your brine shrimp to gutload them with the antibiotic. (Just add two of the 250 mg capsules or crushed up tablets — i.e., 500 mg worth — of the tetracycline to a gallon of water.) Or in the case of the Tetracycline MS, use one 500 mg packet per gallon of freshwater.

Although tetracycline and oxytetracycline generally work very well when administered orally, they are all but useless when used as bath treatments for marine fish. This is because the calcium and magnesium in hard water or saltwater bind to tetracycline and oxytetracycline, rendering them inactive (Yanong, US Dept. of Agriculture). In addition, tetracycline and oxytetracycline are photosensitive drugs and will decompose when exposed to light. So these drugs are very useful for seahorses when they are administered via bioencapsulation, but they are utterly ineffective when added to the water in a saltwater aquarium are hospital tank (Yanong, USDA). This is another reason why you must soak the live adult brine shrimp in freshwater when gutloading them with tetracycline or oxytetracycline.

Gutloading the adult brine shrimp in freshwater has several advantages. First of all, it disinfects the brine shrimp (the osmotic shock in going from concentrated saltwater to freshwater will kill off any protozoan parasites the brine shrimp may have been carrying). Secondly, the freshwater increases the effectiveness of the gutloading process by allowing some of the medication to enter the body of the brine shrimp via osmosis. And gutloading the adult brine shrimp in freshwater saves the hobbyist from having to mix up fresh saltwater every day in order to medicate the adult Artemia. Just use dechlorinated/detoxified freshwater as described above, and everything should go smoothly. But the most important reason that you gutload the adult brine shrimp in freshwater when you are using tetracycline or oxytetracycline is that these medications will be deactivated in saltwater and rendered useless if you attempted to bioencapsulate the medication in adult brine shrimp that are in saltwater.

I would feed your seahorses their fill of adult brine shrimp gutloaded with tetracycline once a day for 7-10 days. Gutload a new portion of the adult brine shrimp each day for the seahorses’ first feeding of the day when they are the most hungry. So that would be a total of 7-10 feedings, one per day, using adult brine shrimp gutloaded with the tetracycline. Give the seahorses a second feeding of frozen Mysis enriched with Vibrance later in the day. The Vibrance includes beta glucan as an active ingredient, which is in an immune stimulant that will help the seahorses to fight off any infections.

It is impossible to determine precisely what dosage of medication each individual fish ingests when gutloading, but the tetracycline antibiotics are very safe and you really cannot overdose a seahorse using this method of treatment. Feeding each seahorse its fill of shrimp gut-loaded with tetracycline for 7-10 days assures that they receive an effective dose of the medication. As long as each seahorse is getting its share of the medicated brine shrimp every day during the treatment period, you needn’t be concerned if one of the ponies is eating more than the others.

If the seahorse is not eating, you can therefore not administer the antibiotics orally, consider treating the pony with gentamicin or a combination of doxycycline + kanamycin, as explained below.

Gentamicin is one of the most potent of all antibiotics against gram-negative bacteria. It is effective when dissolved in saltwater and is readily absorbed into the bloodstream of the fish so it can be used in a hospital tank as follows:

Gentamicin Sulfate Powder 100%

USE: probably the most powerful gram-negative antibacterial on the market today. Effective in fresh and saltwater aquariums. Only a single dose is usually required. One of the few drugs that is absorbed into the bloodstream through the gills.

Dosage: 1/4 teaspoon per 40 gallons. Only one dose is necessary. Treat one time and leave in water for 7-10 days. If water changes are done, replace the medication according to how much water was changed.
(National Fish Pharmaceuticals)

Otherwise, your next best alternative may be to obtain doxycycline and kanamycin from National Fish Pharmaceuticals and use them together to form a synergistic combination of antibiotics that is often very effective in treating Vibrio infections.

Doxycycline hydrochloride

USE: broad spectrum antibiotic derived from oxytetracycline. Use for both gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial disorders, including fin and tail rot, septicemia, and mouth rot. Unlike tetracycline antibiotics, it will not be deactivated by the high pH levels found in marine aquaria. Works in a similar manner to chloramphenicol.

DOSAGE: add 1/4 teaspoon per 20 gallons, every 24 hours for 10 days. Do a 25% water change before each treatment.

Kanamycin sulfate

This is a potent broad-spectrum, gram+/gram- aminogylcoside antibiotic. It is wonderfully effective for aquarium use because it is one of the few antibiotics that dissolves well in saltwater and that is readily absorbed through the skin of the fish. That makes it the treatment of choice for treating many bacterial infections in seahorses. Kanamycin can be combined safely with certain other antibiotics such as doxycycline or neomycin (as well as metronidazole) to further increase its efficacy. Like other gram-negative antibiotics, it will destroy your biofiltration and should be used in a hospital tank only.

USE: gram-negative bacterial infections and resistant forms of piscine tuberculosis (mycobacteria). Works especially well in saltwater aquariums.

DOSAGE: add 1/4 teaspoon per 20 gallons. Treat every 24 hours and perform a 25% water change before each treatment. Treat for 10 days. (When treating piscine tuberculosis, treat for 30 days.)

Both the doxycycline and kanamycin can be obtained online from National Fish Pharmaceuticals at the following URL:

http://www.fishyfarmacy.com/products.html

In summation, I would recommend isolating the affected seahorse and treating him aggressively with antibiotics in your hospital tank. The following antibiotics have proven to be effective in treating such infections when they are detected early (I have listed them in order of preference):

Chloramphenicol (i.e., Chloromycetin)
enrofloxin (i.e., Baytril)
tetracycline or oxytetracycline (but only if they can be administered orally)
gentamicin sulfate
Doxycycline hydrochloride + kanamycin sulfate
Furan2 (if the dosage and duration are increased and early treatment is possible; preferably administered orally)

In your case, the infection appears to be well advanced and you should avoid using Furan2 or Nitrofuracin green and concentrate on the other antibiotics listed above instead.

Best of luck resolving this problem.

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support

TriWolf –

Overall, that sounds like a very good approach for a dwarf seahorse setup.

Yes, sir, the Nassarius snails do best with a sand substrate. In this case, you might consider keeping a few Nassarius snails in the refugium, which will have a sand substrate.

And, in your main tank, you might want to substitute 6-12 Hawaiian volcano shrimp (Halocaridina rubra) as useful scavengers that are are safe with dwarf seahorses and their fry.

I would recommend Nitokra lacustris as a good species of copepods for you to culture.

If you are going to be culturing copepods in large quantities for your rearing program, sir, you may want to acquire a copy of the Aquaculture Desk Reference Manual by Leroy Crestwell to provide you with additional guidance.

In addition, there is a good online article by Adelaide Rhodes (September 26, 2003) titled “instant Algae — Copepods: Nitokra lacustris Starter Cultures” that you may find helpful. Just copy the following URL, paste it in your web browser, and press the “Enter” key, and it will take you directly to the right webpage to read this article:
.
http://www.copepod.com/nitokra.htm

When it comes to copepods, the Harpacticoid copepods are generally preferred for aquaculture, and one of the most useful species is Nitokra lacustris.

It’s been quite a while since I ordered starter cultures, TriWolf, but two good sources I have used in the past are Reed Mariculture and Florida Aqua Farms, so those would be good places to try.

Here are some suggestions from Bill Stokely for culturing Nitokra lacustris to get you started:

Species Nitokra lacustris (Harpacticoid)
Motility Planktonic (in the water column)
Size 40 – 270 microns
Application Larval and Adult Fish
Larval and Adult Seahorses
Zooplankton feeding corals
Wide aperture filter feeders

Life Cycle Eggs ->
Nauplii ->
Copepodites (Juveniles) ->
Adults – Females bearing egg sacs
Reproduction The females only need to mate once in order to have 3 to5 sacs of eggs with 35 eggs each.
How long can a culture be maintained? Indefinitely if treated correctly
What is the doubling time? 2-3 days, depending upon temperature and feed
Culturing Technique
In batch cultures use very low aeration. Treat water with chlorine or filters (to 1 micron) before using. The water sho Mariculturry 9 to 10 days, depending on level of productivity. It is important to be conservative with the feed.
Periodically (every one to two months) filter and restart the cultures to remove detritus. Filter for small juveniles with 35 micron sieve and adults with 125 micron sieve. Use smaller stages for fish feed, retrieve females with egg sacs for restarting cultures.
Restart cultures with females bearing egg sacs. (About 10/L if you have low numbers, 50 to 100/L will result in faster population growth.)
This formula works for every size container, used in batch culture (meaning no recirculation). It may be possible to increase population growth by removing ciliates by filtration – this is not known yet.
Notes
These copepods are about the same size as rotifers which means that they will be hard to see with the naked eye. This product is only recommended for customers that are interested in culturing copepods – not for customers that need an immediate feed source.
better would be keeping Stockley’s seed culture growing,
Reed Mariculture’s algae paste or disks from Florida Aqua Farms…here goes:

The following is the standard
procedure for culturing algae and copepods. I use a 5-gallon plastic water
bottle for the algae culture and a 30-galloon plastic trash can for the
copepods. The temperature range is 75 to 85 F and the salinity is 1.022. Air
pump and air stones are used in both for circulation.
By the way, you can enrich newly hatched Artemia with this algae culture.
A. Algae culture
Microscopic, single-celled algae (phytoplankton) is cultured for use as a
food for filter feeders such as the Tridacna clam and various corals, and
for feeding microinvertebrates such as brine shrimp (Artemia), rotifers, and
copepods. Microinvertebrates are used for feeding larval and juvenile fishes
and corals. We culture several families of phytoplankton; the techniques for
their culture are almost identical. The species we use are Tetraselmis
chuii.
Procedures
1) Clean the containers. Bottles should be acid cleaned and flushed. Large
vats should be scrubbed lightly and rinsed out. The object here is to remove
most of the surface-bound organic matter so that the chlorine sterilization
(next step) is more effective. Be sure to fill acid cleaned bottles
completely with tap water to remove acid vapors.
2) Fill containers with seawater, and add 1.0 ml of Clorox (5.25 % sodium
hypochlorite) for every litre of seawater. Let the containers sit unaerated
away from strong light overnight. If water is needed sooner, add 5 ml of
Clorox per litre and let stand at least 2 hours. The object here is to
maintain a chlorine residual of > 10 ppm overnight. Residual chlorine is
affected by organic load, so more will be needed in dirtier water. A
swimming pool test kit is adequate for measuring residual. Strong light and
aeration will disperse chlorine and reduce its strength.
3) Neutralize the chlorinated seawater by adding 1.0 ml of sodium
thiosulfate solution (1N, 250 g Na2S2O3-5H2O per litre of distilled water)
for every 4.0 ml of Clorox that was added earlier. Neutralization is
complete when water is mixed (i.e. turn on air). Airstones are not
recommended for algae cultures because they take too long to clean. A
plastic pipette or piece of lead on an airhose will do. If airstones are
used, soak them in full-strength Clorox between batches and rinse them
thoroughly before use.
4) Add nutrients to the sterile seawater. Our “F/2” nutrient stocks
(Guillard, 1975) are made up at 500 times final concentration. Thus, 2 ml of
nutrient should be added to each litre of sterile seawater. Nutrients are
kept in a plastic bottle in the refrigerator. Normally, 2L bottles get 4 ml
of F/2; 100L buckets get 200 ml of F/2, etc.
Alternate nutrients: Put 2 level tablespoons Miracid in 300ml tap water.
Store this in any clean, capped plastic bottle at room temperature. Use 1ml
of this blue solution for every liter of algae for dense TE growth. This is
“F/1” strength, and works very well with outdoor Tetraselmis in partial
shade. It may not work for all species. (Stockly’s Aquariums method)
5) Add algae inoculant. It is best to check microscopically and record cell
counts and health occasionally. You can usually tell by color if a 2L
culture is healthy and dense enough to use as inoculant for 100, 200, or
600L cultures. Note the date, inoculant source, inoculant quantity, and
algal species on a piece of tape (or directly on glass bottles) whenever a
new culture is started. This procedure will help you to determine how well a
culture is doing, and is good for inventory control.
C. Copepods
The harpacticoid copepod, Euterpina acutifrons, is a nearly ideal food for
larval marine fishes due to its size, trophic ecology, nutritional value,
culturability, and (most importantly) acceptability by pelagic marine fish
larvae. There are few literature references to successful copepod culture.
Suggested readings include Theilacker and Kimball (1984); and Zurlini et aL
(1978). Culture techniques are easy, using the following suggestions.
1) Do not use an algae that gets too slimy and settles heavily. You will
want to aerate sufficiently to suspend the algae, but not so much that you
interupt sexual coupling. Slimy surfaces will trap nauplii. Chaetoceros
gracilis (4 x 4 x 5um) works well. So does TE. You may get faster growth and
a higher fecundity if a dinoflagellate or other flagellated green
phytoplankter is present. Normal growth rates at 25oC are 10-15 % per day
(up to 100 fold increase in 8 days), with harvest densities of 20 to 50
adults copepods per ml.
2) Partial shading helps, if cultures are outdoors. Keep the cultures in a
growth phase, and change them over to a clean container every few weeks.
3) Inoculate with 1-10% of your harvest. I like to keep the density above 1
per ml so I can count them with a 1 ml. pipette, but they will grow fast at
densities of 1 per litre. Algal densities of 5 x l0e4 to 2 x lOe5 cells per
ml will give good growth rates. You can approximate these densities as
visibilities of 7 to 10 cm.
4) Do not let rotifers enter the system. They will usually outproduce the
copepods. It is difficult to keep these two zooplankters separate with
screens because their sizes overlap. If you do get a rotifer takeover,
isolate 10-100 gravid female copepods and start over in 2 to 40L of new
medium (check them in a microscope to make sure there are no rotifers).
5) There are 6 naupliar stages, and 6 copepodite stages, including the
adult. Size is 50 x 50 x 70um (N1) to 150 x 175 x 700um(C6). I use a 37um
screen to harvest N1 & N2, and a 100um screen for copepodites. Generation
time is about 8 to 11 days under best conditions, at temperatures of
24-26oC. If you stock your rearing container with all sizes of copepods, new
nauplii will be produced by the adults to replace those consumed by the fish
larvae.
Good Luck,
Bill Stokely

When it comes to the mushroom corals, the Panacur should not do them any harm at all.

As you know, TriWolf, fenbendazole (i.e., Panacur) is an inexpensive anthelmintic agent (dewormer) used for large animals such as horses, and the de-worming granules can be obtained without a prescription from stores that carry agricultural products (e.g., farm and ranch equipment, farming supplies and products, veterinary supplies, livestock and horse supplies, livestock and horse feed). If you live in a rural area, those would be good places to obtain it as well.

However, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when treating an aquarium with fenbendazole, TriWolf. Administering a regimen of fenbendazole (FBZ) or Panacur will eradicate any hydroids, Aiptasia rock anemones, or bristleworms from live rock or live sand, thereby rendering them completely seahorse safe. The recommended dose is 1/8 teaspoon of the horse dewormer granules (22.2% fenbendazole) per 10 gallons of water. Dose the live rock with 1/8 teaspoon/10 gallons every other day until you have administered a total of 3 such treatments (Liisa Coit, pers. com.). Even one dose will do a fine job of eradicating bristeworms, but Aiptasia rock anemones and hydroids are a bit tougher and may require 2-3 doses to eliminate entirely.

Because fenbendazole is essentially a de-worming agent, it will destroy any bristleworms, flat worms, spaghetti worms or the like. The FBZ or Panacur treatments are best administered to the live rock in a bucket or hospital tank before the LR is introduced in the main tank. Otherwise, the massive die-off of the worm population in the aquarium may require large water changes in order to prevent a dangerous ammonia spike! And after the treatment is completed, its a good idea to add a portion of newly purchased live sand to the system in order to help restore its normal diversity of fauna and microfauna again (Liisa Coit, pers. com.).

Fenbendazole does not have any adverse effects on biological filtration, but be aware that it is death to many Cnidarians besides hydroids. Mushrooms and related corals are generally not affected, but expect it to have dire effects on other corals (e.g., sinularias), polyps, gorgonians, and anemones. In general, any Cnidarians with polyps that resemble the stalked family of Hydrozoans are likely to be hit hard by fenbendazole, so don’t use this treatment in a reef tank!

Also be aware that fenbendazole seems to soak into the porous live rock and be absorbed indefinitely. I know one hobbyist who transferred a small piece of live rock that had been treated with fenbendazole (Panacur) months earlier into a reef tank, where it killed the resident starfish and Astrea snails. So enough of the medication may be retained within treated live rock to impact sensitive animals months after the fenbendazole was administered. Don’t treat live rock intended for reef systems with fenbendazole (Panacur)!

At the lower dosage recommended for nursery tanks and dwarf seahorse tanks with fry (1/16 tsp. per 10 gallons), fenbendazole normally does not harm cleaner shrimp and decorative shrimp. With the exception of Astrids (Astrea), Coit and Worden have found it does not usually affect the types of snails typically used as cleanup crews (e.g., Nassarius, Ceriths, and Nerites). It will kill starfish but copepods, hermit crabs, and shrimp are normally not affected.

Macroalgae such as the feathery or long-bladed varieties of Caulerpa or Hawaiian Ogo (Gracilaria) are not harmed by exposure to fenbendazole at even triple the normal dose. In fact, if you will be using Caulerpa in your nursery tanks to provide hitching posts for the fry and serve as a form of natural filtration, it’s a very wise precaution indeed to treat them with a regimen of fenbendazole beforehand.

So fenbendazole (FBZ) or Panacur is primarily useful for ridding bare-bottomed nursery tanks and dwarf seahorse setups of hydroids and Aiptasia anemones, ridding Caulerpa and other macroalge of hydroids or Aiptasia before its goes into the aquarium, and cleansing live rock of bristleworms, hydroids, and Aiptasia rock anemones before it is introduced to the aquarium.

It can also be used to eradicate bristleworms, hydroids, an Aiptasia from an established aquarium if it does not house sensitive animals such as live corals and gorgonians, starfish, Astrea snails, or tubeworms and other desirable worms that may be harmed by FBZ, providing you monitor the ammonia levels closely and are prepared to deal with the ammonia spike that may result from the sudden death of the worm population.

Best of luck with your dwarf seahorse tank, TriWolf!

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support