How to get a wild-caught sea horse to eat?

[s1214215]

Hi Reefland people

I bought a sea horse the other day. I think its possibly wild caught - even thought he guy at the shop in the market swore on his mothers grave that it was captive bred. But this is Thailand , so its probably not true . All I can say is that its hard to feed

Ok.. I put in into my refugium/algae tank thats loaded with pods of all kinds... Good thing is its eating them now and then. I am trying to wean it onto live bloodworms, artemia and mosquito larvae - not a lot of luck so far. Then I want to get it onto frozen food.

Theres only one sea horse in the tank so far.. Should I have a pair? will two do better than one. How hard is it to get one of these wild-caught animals to eat frozen foods eventually?

[The Old Fool]

It sounds like you are doing all the right things. No one can tell you how long it will take or even if it you will be successful. You just need to be patient.
The good news is that your seahorse is eating and that says that she is healthy. But since you just bought her and you don't know the origin, we don't know if she was just recently ripped from the sea or coddled in a breeder tank. The fish is likely stressed and needs time to aclimate to her new home.
Good Luck.

[forestal]

if you have access to cyclopeeze, try using this and mysis shrimp (live), gut load the mysis shrimp, then you can start tempting with frozen mysis soaked with cyclopeeze...also garlic seems to induce hunger sometimes, try soaking frozen food with some garlic too...what type of seahorse is it? some are tougher to wean to frozen than others....

[s1214215]

if you have access to cyclopeeze, try using this and mysis shrimp (live), gut load the mysis shrimp, then you can start tempting with frozen mysis soaked with cyclopeeze...also garlic seems to induce hunger sometimes, try soaking frozen food with some garlic too...what type of seahorse is it? some are tougher to wean to frozen than others....

Sorry I have no access to Cyclopeeze.. Thailand is rather limited with such things - but has lots of live foods available.

What type of seahorse? Dunno. Its kind of grey to brown, with irregular white blotches. Its about 3 inches long. Will post a pic asap. Its moving about the fuge nicely and seems to like the forest of halimeda's, grape calerpa and other algaes where it hunts the pods. I just hope it will eat other things once its cleaned up the pods...

[forestal]

try mysid shrimp or brine shrimp and gut load them with selco (or other nutrient loaded additive) soaked fine flake...

set up a feeding station...small shell or shallow cup, and start at same time 2-3 x /day putting the gut loaded food in that spot so the pony learns to come to the trough for food,
if they go for mysid, switching to frozen soaked in same stuff you are gut loading can work well, artemia are not that nutritious naturally and need to be gut loaded with good fatty acids to work.

seahorse digestive systems are very in-efficient and they can literally starve to death while eating constantly if the food source is not nutritious enough.

if it is local, it may be a h.kuda, but i will try my luck with the id....