Dwarf Seahorse's new home

Thanks! Hatching the bbs is real easy. I use artemia hatching dishes. you can see one of them in the last pic of the led mod part of this thread. The dishes are real nice because you don't need the air or light and the bbs swim to the center, leaving the empty capsules in the outer ring.

 

Just letting you know, that first of all, any contact of the cysts with water increases the chances of seahorse failure in time due to bacterial infestations.
Also, for long term survival of dwarfs Dan Underwood of Seahorse Source recommends that they not be fed NHBBS, but instead, feed them gut loaded BBS.
After the BBS have been hatched out, preferably from decapped cysts but at least sterilized cysts, rinsed well, you place them in an enrichment container. After about a day they develop into the second instar stage and develop a mouth and anus and you begin gut loading.
Gut load for two 12 hour periods with new water and enrichment for each 12 hour period.
Again, rinse before feeding them.
Reason for this is the general failure of a lot of dwarf systems around 3 months (give or take a bit) because the nutrient profile of BBS itself is DHA deficient.
The thread is long but contains excellent information.
You do have to join the org to be able to read it I believe.
http://forum.seahorse.org/index.php?showtopic=43014&hl=

 

Thanks for the link. I've been a member there for a few months so no problem's getting it to open. Thanks for all the other info too. I'll take it into account and add it to everything else I'm learning about them.

 

This is a pretty happy day! Since the move here my Dwarve's are doing very great! My wife had to leave at the crack of dawn and of course woke me up to say goodbye at 6:00 am. I'm glad she did though because as the sun began to rise my ponies became active and I got to the priviledge of seeing my only male and one of the females begin the morning breeding dance! I video'd it even though I knew it was to dark to see much but I didn't want to disturb them by turning on the LED's.
Then to make the day even better I watched one of the pipefish eat granulated food and a seahorse hitched nearby seemed to 'copy' him. I've been trying to get them to eat GP Diets Active Spheres for a week now, just to see if I could, and this is most encouraging!

 

Alright!! Good day!! Let's hope they keep eating that food. Good news!

 

Congrats...hope more copy the pipefish...will make having them easier on you.

 

thats good news! then you could start a breeding program and sell seahorses that eat prepared food. make it easier on the rest of us!

 

Oh I hope they do too! That would make me so happy!!

By the time I had to leave there were a couple of them eating it but the ponies seem more interested in the smaller particles. The stuff I have now is 500-800 microns so I'm ordering a tube of of smaller artemia replacement for fry and see if that helps.

LOL don't know about that. ORA did have a line of H. Zosterae that were eating prepared but they discontinued them for some reason. If they failed I doubt I'll get it figuired out. Would be nice to broaden thier diet this way though. It'd be way easier on me.

 

Congrats on all the success.