My female erectus hasnt eaten in two meals (2 days). she looks around when food is in the water but doesnt snick at any. The male is eating fine, but she just kinda looks at the food and then looks at me. Could my presence be making her nervous? she was the first to eat when they got into this tank tuesday. what do i do?????

What were they eating before you got them... don't just say "Mysid". :) What brand? Believe it or not, I have to use BOTH PEI Mysid and Hikari. My males ONLY want the big, fat PEI. My female wants ONLY the dainty little Hikari.

*sigh*

Try using a ridgid airline, stuffing the tail of a mysis in to the tube end, and dancing it in front of her. The action may trigger her to eat. When she realizes that "Hmm...this is good" she may no longer need to be teased into eating.

D

Do you have access to live adult brine or live mysis or ghost shrimp? Sometimes it helps to jump start them. This happens quit a bit when receiving new horses. It happened to one batch of mine but I also had live foods available to get them out of their funk.

the weird thing is that she was such a good eater the first day i had her. But all of a sudden shes not. I ordered what i think was hakiri (smaller mysis) brand frozen mysis shrimp...got it off of drsfostersmith.com

Ill try that tonight.

she still didnt eat even after being tempted.

also, i dont know if its just normal seahorse nature but she seems "lazy" lately. Like she'll slump down with her tail hitched while resting her body on a nearby fake coral branch. If she doesnt eat tomorrow....and i dont have access to live food....what do i do then?

I can get freshwater ghost shrimp from petsmart but theres no gaurantee that they will be small enough...or that petsmart will even have any in stock right now.

Your tank parameters okay? Is there enough air bubbling?

well, i did turn down the air last night because i thought it was too high...but how could that have done anything?

i checked trites, trates, and ammonia on wednesday and all were zero.

Turn it back up. Slumping can be from a lack of oxygen. And not all horses react the same to lower levels of O2 so it's not like one can say the levels are fine just because only one horse is showing signs.

How is she this morning?

I just had to throw one of mine in a hospital tank.... now I have 4 uncycled tanks to manage!

that did the trick, a night with the airstone turned up on "high" and she was snicking away at mysis.

Whoo Hoo!! Great news! Can't wait to see more pics!

And just for reference, Dan uses a mixture of Hikari and PE mysis on all his horse... it's not one or the other.

PE mysis....im confused i dont know what that is...brand name?

Ya, PE mysis is a brand but it is also a different kind of shrimp. It's much larger than the hikari and it's actually a freshwater shrimp. Definately not as widely distributed as hikari and can be down right impossible to get it some areas.

If you use it on growing seahorses they grow much faster. I personally am not into using it on a regular basis throughout the SH's life because of the risk of Fatty Liver Disease.... yup, sometimes we feed our horses TOO well.

Many people use it all the time but I can't get behind using a freshwater critter to feed a saltwater fish (outside of raising them). Reminds me of feeding guppies to a Lionfish.

how is your horse that had to be hospitalized renee? Any better? symptoms?

Im really interested in seahorse and marine pathology now for some reason....all details would be appreciated.

No better.... slightly worse after 48 hours of neomycin/triple sulfa. I don't wanna run all over your thread or anything but here is a pic.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y248/seahorsedreams/sick.jpg

Check out the big ole zit. He may be a teenager but this juvie is not suppose to have them. I was waiting for something to appear because of his coloring a couple of days prior. No doubt this is a vibriosis infection. If he succumbs to the illness I will send him in for a necropsy.

I have a pretty good photo history of the seahorses that have gotten ill in my care. Over all these years that includeds a nice few horses. We are throwing together a little thing to include some seahorse diease discussions with pictures.

wow im sorry renee. that really sucks.

but, i have been doing to reading about vibrio (cant remember where) but it was either vibrio or some other common seahorse ailment...anyways theres research going on right now to develop a vaccine for seahorses for a common illness like that. Have you heard anything about it?

It still hasn't progressed anywhere. After all of these years of playing with it, it still hasn't amounted to anything. Nowhere on the horizon to benefit us, I'm afraid.

Every dead seahorse sent in for a necropsy is another source for us to gather information and cause/effects and outcomes.

Thats a really good idea, i work for a veterinarian so im sure (God forbid) if anything happens i could easily get a horse sent to the university of Georgia for a necropsy.

I know a pathologist that does them for free... you just pay shipping. And if something does happen, put the specimen in the fridge in a baggy without water until ready to ship.

But I wish you many many years of disease free seahorse keeping!

lol thanks