Another newbie and questions

[Vicky Hartman]

Hi,
I just found this discussion group today and I'm so very glad I have.
I have a seahorse. I purchased him/her about 3 weeks ago. From the looking and reading I've been doing I believe my little horse is a Barbouri. Which I also read is a finicky eater. :(
And also from my reading I believe it to be a wild catch. Which really makes me upset, since there are so many vendors that have tank raised that I can't for the life of me see why they are still being brought out of their natural homes and slapped in small tanks. When they are use to the freedom and space of the oceans.
I feed him/her 2 times a day with frozen mysis shrimp that has been coated with Vibrance. So far I've never seen it eat!!!
Common sense tells me that it must be eating or 3 weeks later it wouldn't still be alive. Then fear takes forefront and I'm afraid my common sense is all askew.
I've tried frozen brine and guppy fry all of which it didn't appeal to it's appetite either. Sacrificing several of my guppy fry was a real heart breaker for me. But if the seahorse would have eaten them I'd have felt it worth the sacrifice.
The seahorse seems to be doing fine. It swims around it's tank and hitches to everything in there. So I maybe worrying about nothing but I'd sure like one of you guys to tell me that that is the case. Since this is my first attempt at keeping them I have no selfconfidence at all. Thanks for any help or information you offer me. And again I'm sooo very glad I found this discussion board.
Vicky Hartman

[Will]

barbs are very nice little horses; aside from it being wild caught, you made a nice choice. yes, your common sense is working :D your little friend would certainly not be alive if he were not eating. you might want to try live adult brine shrimp to initiate feeding. if he is eating pods or something similar in your tank, they're probably in short supply and won't last too long. so, pick up some live brine and let us know how he does..
fourhand2

[DgenR8]

Hi Vicky,
[welcome]

[Freya]

Hi Vicky.

H. barbouri are no more finicky than other seahorses. I keep them along with 5 other species and if anything my barbouri are the biggest pigs in the tank! This information probably comes from when all the barbouri in the market were wc, wild caught horses can be extremely hard to feed as they are used to a variety of live food.

It is very important that you get your little guy eating. Seahorses store very little fat on their bodies and will soon become very weak with out food. It is likely that your seahorse has been surviving on a diet of pods but this won't sustain him for long. You will need to try and get some nutritous live food that he will eat. Live brine shrimp would be an ok stand in as long as you enrich it well with selco or something similar. The best bet for you would be to order some Red Shrimp from OR (Red Iron Horse Feed) these are also available from Stockleys. Or try and get some appropriately sized FW Ghostshrimp and gutload them with mysis or something else good before feeding them out.

In the library at www.seahorse.org there are some very good articles on how to train a wc seahorse on to frozen. There are also some threads in the Discussion area that may help you.

Keep trying with this little fellow. Just one thing though, it is important not to mix captive bred and wild caught seahorses. The wc's often harbour pathogens that the cbs have not have previous exposure to. This means that they can be killed very quickly by something a wc horse is carrying. So keep WC and CB horses in very separate systems to keep them all healthy.

To tell if your seahorse is a male or a female look in the area where the tail joins the abdomen, if it is smooth looking in this area then there is a pouch there. If the tail joins the abdomen in a 90 degree angle then you have a female. The female also has the anal fin at the base of the abdomen near the tail, and the male has his up above the opening of the pouch, this can be hard to spot if you aren't very experienced though.

You need to tell me more about the sort of tank you have the barbouri in, size, flow, temp etc. So we can make sure it is in the optimal environment. It is very importnant to keep your water perameters optimum at the time as your horse will be a little stressed already and you don't want to add to this as it will weaken him and make it easier for him to get sick.

Good luck!