For you seahorse keepers

[OUsnakebyte]

I saw Chad's post on his setup (nice thread, by the way), and then I saw this email on my aquarist listserve - thought there might be some interest since I know some of you keep seahorses. It seems this might benefit a larger number, but perhaps you could experiment with a couple as well.

 

Note - these are not my ideas. My thoughts end here.

 

Cheers

Mike

 

 

Hello List

 

I wanted to share with everybody my way of feeding the horses. At the moment, we have around 950 horses. So... feeding can take a lot of time. This may help. It will involve a Lee's Worm Feeder. $1.58 at Aquatic Eco.

 

Aquatic Eco Link

 

You will need to drill a hole in the bottom, around 5/32 drill bit is used. This can vary, based on how fast you want the food to escape.

 

Hang the feeder the furthest away from your drain/filter. All you have to do is, put some live food in the feeder and let the horses feed.

 

Some of the benefits, in my opinion:

-Helps train the horses to come feed at one spot (less food in filter)

-Allows you to observe who comes up for food (inspecting the health of the animal)

-Slowly will feed the system in the evening and day (always a plus for Syngnathidae)

 

I like to start this method with 3-4 month old horses. It really helps them find food, and feed throughout the day. As they grow, you can enlarge the hole and even put frozen mysis shrimp in there. Individual horses can stick their snout in the hole and grab shrimp out. Total time saver for us.

 

I do have a feeder on exhibit all the time (may not be possible for some of you). What I have observed is, the horses will check the cone ever 20-30 minutes to see if food is present in the feeder. This really creates a better exhibit animal compared to most horses that hitch on the bottom all day.

[Matt LeBaron]

I have also had good luck using bird feeding and watering stations as food dishes for my seahorses. They usually have a perch that the seahorses can attach to and I just place the mysis shrimp into the dish with a clear plastic tube. My seahorses know what the tube means and come over to the dish to eat when I feed. Attach some suction cups to the feeder and you can place it wherever you would like in the tank.

[Chad]

I think I may look into that... I currently use the turkey baster method, which I like although it is a little time consuming, but I am not feeding 950 seahorses either!!!

[Coral Hind]

950 horses is very impressive! Thanks for sharing the idea Mike.

 

Matt, Is the pink thing in your avatar the bird feeder? I was wondering what that was.