feeding live foods to seahorses

[gulexx]

I was wondering if there anyone gives their horses live foods. I have 4 horses in a 20 gallon with 30lbs live rock and several live plants , a sponge, blue crabs, a scallop and other little hitchers. I feed frozen mysis and brine and live brine and other live "dwellers" from my 75 gallon tank. They seem happiest when being given the live foods. Does anyone else give thier horses a continious supply of live foods. Can you aquire cultures to set up ? I currently have 3, 2.5 gallon tanks in the basement for cycling brineshrimp for all the tanks and room for several more if needed. I know you can order "cultures" in the States, but I live in Ontario Canada and no one around here has such a thing. Any help would be great.

[Will]

hi and welcome to reef central (if i was a moderator i'd do that cool welcome thing that most people get)! anyway, good questions. first of all, sounds like a good set up. be aware that your scallop (probably Lima scabra) does not have a history of being a successful specimen in captivity. but that's beside the point.. i feed my horses frozen pe mysis every day except wednesday. on wednesdasys i feed them unenriched live adult brine shrimp that i culture on my back porch. live foods, unfortunately, are not the best foods for horses by any means unless one is using live mysis shrimp. that is precisely the reason so many owners of wild caught horses struggle for so long to get their horses eating frozen foods. limiting live foods to once a week is a good idea; twice a week at the ultimate maximum if they're eating frozen foods. feeding strictly live foods kind of defeats the purpose of buying captive bred horses. in any case, a large array of floral/faunal cultures are available from www.instant-algae.com. i'm sure they'll ship to canada, but in case they dont, they list several canadian distributors of their products. they're a bit expensive though, and like i said before, frozen mysis shrimp are the single best food for any seahorse.
fourhand2

ps- by the way, i just found http://www.islandscallops.com/hatch.htm. they distribute to canada.

[DgenR8]

Here's "that cool welcome thing" for 'ya
[welcome]

[Will]

thanks dgenr8! :D

[seafarm]

I have several customers that feed live rotifers to their seahorses (both babies and adults) and seem to have quite good success. Rotifers are fun and easy to grow, and are good food for just about everything from corals to fish. We have some simple directions for growing rotifers on our website at

http://www.instant-algae.com/reeftanks/refugia.htm

[Transam]

I have a 75 gal. reef with a 25 gal refugium. I have had it running for a while. I have a plague of mysis in the fuge and main tank. They are every where. So I split my fuge in half with plexiglass put a bunch of holes in it so the shrimp could still move on both sides cleared out some of the caulerpa and now my little horse has a home. He eats live mysis all the time. I have had him for a while never fed him myself and he is the fattest seahorse I have ever seen. He hunts for the shrimp. And still has not made any dent in mysis shrimp population.

T/A

[Louis Z]

I have a mysis population from Randy at seafarm. There are many ways to set up a culture some intense and others like transam has a natural population going. If you do go the mysis route then you do better with larger holding containers. The 2.5 gallon is way too small. I use large plastic bins that hold about 20gallons. I didnt have a natural population or a friend to get me started so I had to buy mine. I would stick to frozen as others have mentioned and feed live once in a while. So that if you lose your live culture your horse will not go hungry. But I must admit that I love to watch my fish go after live foods. I have both large containers of adult artemia and mysis. I just cant seem to get my amphipod culture going.