Dwarf Seahorse questions

[Wushu mom]

Hi, my name is Luke and I have been considering and researching dwarf seahorses for a while. I have a few questions, and was hooping someone with experience could chime in.

First off, I am interested in culturing pods for the horses. I have both phytoplankton and tigriopus californicus cultures started. I am wondering if anybody has experience with a copepod based diet for dwarfs. If you have done this, did you count on copepods breeding in the tank or did you culture, and if you did what was your tank setup?

Also, what kind of filter is everyone using for their dwarf tanks? sponge, hob, or?

Thanks, Luke

[CodyH]

You will definitely want to be prepared for baby brine hatching because dwarfs (zosterae) eat a lot. However, they really do seem to be more casual eaters than hunters like mandarins. It is certainly great to aim for copepod cultures rather than in-tank because the DSH would quickly deplete pod populations in-tank. You could also have some sort of pod breeding area sectioned off somehow in th tank to keep the dwarfs out as an experiment of sorts.

[Wushu mom]

I have read that wild caught specimens hunt copepods better than captive bred who have been fed with bbs in front of their face their whole life. I have a spare 10 gallon plus a 2.5 gallon jar that will eventually be culturing tigriopus californicus. Do you think that would be enough for a 2.5 gallon seahorse tank with 3 or 4 pairs of dwarfs? I was thinking of essentially putting a pile of rubble in the back of the tank to provide a place where the copepods could breed without being completely wiped out.

[rayjay]

Unfortunately, copepods don't breed fast enough to be the major food source.
Unless you have an extensive culture set up for pods, you wouldn't even be able to add enough for them to survive without other foods.
For them to survive on natural pod growth, you would need a VERY large tank with large rubble pile and very few dwarfs.
Wild or captive bred, you are going to have to feed enriched brine nauplii daily.
Tigriopus californicus, otherwise known as tigger pods are NOT good for seahorses as they tend to frequently latch onto the seahorses and irritate them.
Tisbe and Acartia would be better choices.

[Tomtopping]

Don't u have to feed them like 3 times a day becuase they have no stomach? Not shure if it's true

[Wushu mom]

RayJay
Ive heard some people say that and some say it was a myth. Do you have any experience with it? the tigriopus, that is.

Thanks, Luke

[rayjay]

Yes I do have experience with the tiggers and seahorses and I no longer culture them.
Seahorses, dwarf or standards, do better with multiple feedings as their digestive tract is like that of tangs, basically just a tract with nothing we know as a stomach. In the wild, seahorses, like tangs, graze throughout the day so it's not a big thing that they don't have a stomach.
I personally prefer to feed mine 3 times a day, but many only feed twice a day but I haven't seen any studies or facts on whether or not seahorse condition is lessened by only feeding twice.
I know that my seahorses are fatter when I feed them 3 times a day as I went through a spell where I was feeding only twice a day to see if water quality would improve much. I think it lasted about 7 or 8 months and after not seeing a BIG improvement in water quality, (there was a minor improvement) I went back to feeding 3 times a day and then realized that their bodies were no longer as slim after being back to 3 for a couple of months.

[rayjay]

I should have mentioned also that Dan Underwood of seahorsesource.com, doesn't even include the tiggers in his list of copepods he sells for seahorses.http://seahorsesource.com/?wpsc_product_category=live-food (http://seahorsesource.com/?wpsc_product_category=live-food)
Some dwarf owners like to stock the dwarf tank with live mysid shrimp so that the nauplii can be an extra food supply for the dwarfs.

[Wushu mom]

Okay I guess Im stuck with brine shrimp. Has anyone ever used the hatchery disk from brineshrimpdirect for dwarfs? How did it go?

[rayjay]

Some people love it and others don't like it so it's a personal preference.
However, as the hatcher costs a fair bit, and as you also need something to enrich the brine nauplii with (after they hatch and then grow out for a day) something cheaper might fit your bill.
I use two litre pop (soda) bottles for hatching and for enriching.
DIY Hatcher (http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/Hatcher.html)
IMO, the best enrichment to use is Dan's Feed, with or without Beta Glucan, from Dan Underwood at seahorsesource.com.
http://seahorsesource.com/?wpsc_product_category=enrichments (http://seahorsesource.com/?wpsc_product_category=enrichments)

[Wushu mom]

I have DIY soda bottle hatchery but its kind of a PITA for me. I know that most people use bbs half the time and enriched half the time, do you think instead of enriched i could supplement that with copepods that were enriched? Also, what type oof filter do people use on dwarf tanks?

[rayjay]

I'm personally not aware of anyone enriching half the time and not for the other half. I AM aware of some enriching all the time and some not ever enriching.
From the years I've been on the seahorse.org forum, I feel that the evidence is sufficient to recommend always enriching because it seems that the dwarfs live a bit longer when enrichment is a regular part of the diet.
Dwarfs don't live very long so any improvement is good.
You would never get enough enriched copepods to make up for not enriching the brine shrimp naupulii.
Speaking of PITA, even using the store bought hatchers, the greater majority of dwarf keepers drop out in under a year because the feeding regimen gets to be too much for them after a while.
It's definitely not a hobby for someone who is lazy.
Keeping dwarfs is more work IMO, than keeping standards.
I think the majority of dwarf keepers use sponge filters, but some use small in tank or HOB filters that have protected intakes to keep the dwarfs from getting sucked in.
I had mine on a timer so it would be off during feedings.

[rayjay]

Here is a link at the "org" for a current dwarf thread by a friend of mine.

Researching Possibility of Dwarf Keeping (http://forum.seahorse.org/index.php?showtopic=48947)

[Wushu mom]

Thanks for the thread and website. I now remember I already joined a year or so ago to research these guys! My plan for now is to get a 5 gallon tank and section off a section of it leaving 3 display gallons and 2 for the back chamber. In the back chamber there will be a HOB filter/fuge on one side of a partition and on the other side a sponge filter. I will have 15 gallons of copepods culturing to try and feed them with at first, but I do have brine shrimp eggs, hatcheries, and enrichment to fall back on if there is too big of a strain on the copepod culture. Ill start out with 3 to 5 pairs of dwarves and see where it goes from there.

Is there anything Im missing or not taking into consideration?

Thanks, Luke

[rayjay]

I have 10g of pod cultures on the go and I'll tell you that it won't support two pair of dwarfs for a month. They just don't regenerate very fast and they take a long time to grow to any decent size.

[truetricia]

Hi, my name is Luke and I have been considering and researching dwarf seahorses for a while. I have a few questions, and was hooping someone with experience could chime in.

First off, I am interested in culturing pods for the horses. I have both phytoplankton and tigriopus californicus cultures started. I am wondering if anybody has experience with a copepod based diet for dwarfs. If you have done this, did you count on copepods breeding in the tank or did you culture, and if you did what was your tank setup?

Also, what kind of filter is everyone using for their dwarf tanks? sponge, hob, or?

Thanks, Luke
I caught live pods in Florida (where I lived) and then froze them into a cube tray. I mixed them with selcon and cyclopeeze for additional nutrition. My dwarfs loved it.

[Wushu mom]

Truetricia- So you trained your dwarves onto frozen? I heard that there was little to no success with doing that long term.

[rayjay]

She also fed baby brine as she posted on another thread.

[Wushu mom]

Thats still very interesting that you were able to get them to eat frozen. Did you have a hard time training them to it or did they ever refuse the frozen copepods? Its an interesting idea.