Auto feeding of sea horses

[mmfish]

Would it be possible to set up a refugium with food elements for SH's that would allow periodic release of foodstuff satisfying their demand?

[ReefNutPA]

Great idea for supplemental feedings, but it would not produce enough pods, shrimps etc long-term for all their nutritional needs. You would still have to feed the seahorses, and the foods from the refugium would be extra nutrition.

So if your question is would you still need to feed them.... the answer is yes.

Tom

[mmfish]

why not set up 2 or more refugiums to increase foodstuffs?

[ann83]

Possible, but you are going to have to set up a lot of refugiums and a lot of water volume compared to the number of seahorses you'll be able to keep. It'd be a lot of work, and a lot of water, for a very small number of fish. I'm not sure how many gallons of 'fuge you'd need per seahorse, but it would be such a high number that I think its pretty much irrelevant.

[DanU]

I have seen a single seahorse in a pond about 18 inches deep with about 2000 gallons total volume (converted koi pond). Even with all the rock and macro algae, the horse still took frozen foods as a supplement.

Dan

[aninjaatemyshoe]

So, this was a 2000 gallon tank entirely devoted to one seahorse?

[DanU]

No. It does have a handful of other fish, a few corals, a few hundred pounds of rock, a light layer of sand, some macro algae, some starfish, a ton of various snails, some hermit crabs.

Really neat pond. It is in the front yard and comes under a glass window into the living room. An indoor/outdoor pond. Works great for viewing fish but you don't have as much appreciation for the corals since all the viewing is from above the water.

Dan

[mmfish]

Somehow it must be possible to set up a tank w SH's and some level of self feeding. How much do they eat in the wild each day? If balanced properly w/o too much competition it could be possible, say a 200 gal reef tank centered around a pair of SH's ? With mysis shrimp breeding in tank and refugium.

[DanU]

Possible yes. Difficult, definitely! A healthy adult seahorse can easily consume a dozen or more shrimp per day. They will consume many more than that of live mysids. It takes thousands of copepods to equal 1 shrimp.

Dan

[pledosophy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13601212#post13601212 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DanU
No. It does have a handful of other fish, a few corals, a few hundred pounds of rock, a light layer of sand, some macro algae, some starfish, a ton of various snails, some hermit crabs.

Really neat pond. It is in the front yard and comes under a glass window into the living room. An indoor/outdoor pond. Works great for viewing fish but you don't have as much appreciation for the corals since all the viewing is from above the water.

Dan

What! Dude are you kidding me? You know that is like one of my dream tanks right and you never even tell me you have it?

Pics?

If you extend the window a bit farther down in the wall so you could sit in the living room and see into the tank from the side, you'd have my dream system.

[pledosophy]

IME breeding shrimp in tank without using seperators is difficult as the parents are cannibalistic. I had about 100g's of shrimp raising tanks seperated and still could not raise enough mysis to feed a single seahorse and had to buy foods as well.

Between having a seahorse who will eat everything they see and having shrimp who you are trying to breed who think there young are snacks, i think it would be most difficult.

JMO

[DanU]

Kevin, It isn't my pond. Belongs to an Attorney in town. He hired my sister to convert it from a Koi pond to a reef pond. It is really cool. It is an old style Florida home. The pond is in the front yard. He has a huge plate glass window which drops down into the water. It does have some challenges such as dealing with temperatures, rain etc. Still, it is pretty cool.

Dan

[leezer]

I've been trying to think this through mainly for the purpose of keeping dwarf seahorses sustained through vacations. Any idea if a fuge full of chaeto and loaded with copepods could sustain a half dozen dwarfs for even a few days? I'd imagine feeding them baby brine immediately before leaving, then throwing in a ball of chaeto, and having the fuge circulating through the tank would at least get them for a day, but I'm not sure how much longer.

Any thoughts?

[heatherdee]

At the end of the summer, I went away for a week and had a bunch of erectus fry only two weeks old. My wife doesnt deal with it at all and knows nothing about feeding.
So I over-hatched bbs and set up a couple 10 gallon tanks with the bbs. All she had to do was come down and scoop some out with a net and rinse and feed. I tried to make it as easy as possible for her.
She didnt lose any.

I also showed her how to start 2 new hatchers going in the middle of the week. I pre-measured everything out. The water, eggs ...everything.

Thats the best way to go. Get someone to come in once a day and try to make it as easy as possible for them.

[pledosophy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13622161#post13622161 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DanU
Kevin, It isn't my pond. Belongs to an Attorney in town. He hired my sister to convert it from a Koi pond to a reef pond. It is really cool. It is an old style Florida home. The pond is in the front yard. He has a huge plate glass window which drops down into the water. It does have some challenges such as dealing with temperatures, rain etc. Still, it is pretty cool.

Dan

Could Abbie not post some pics for "research"?

Maybe an experiment on how much I will drool. ;)

Makes sense an attorney would have it. I should go back to school, and get a better job just so I can have a better tank. :D

[micstarz]

Addressing the original thread topic:
Why not have many many guppy breeder boxes hanging in the tank with chaeto in them? Like I'm talking about a LOt fo these boxes. Then you could swap them over with some clumps of chaeto in the tank. The chaeto in the guppy boxes acts as a fuge. I am using this system in my 10gal for supplemental feeding.

[thumbsy]

Probably wouldn't work for anything but dwarfs. I've been thinking about trying to build one of these for my pipefish using the small acrylic boxes that you buy rocher chocolates with.

Geo Sapper (http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-07/nftt/index.php)