Seahorse needs help

[ms_ k]

I have a seahorse (reidi, I think) that is just not doing well, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to help him as much as someone with more SH knowledge and experience.

I've had him about one year. Lately, his snick has been getting weaker and weaker. Now, he can't really even snick food at all. Normally, he eats frozen mysis. He's still swimming around and hitching to posts, so with proper care, I think he might be able to recover. I have noticed two grey spots on him...one on his "jaw", the other on the tip of his snout (snout rot/vibrio?)

If I drive him to ATL, is there anyone willing to adopt him and nurse him back to health?

Alicia

 

[ms_ k]

Well, some good news. I switched out his food..feeding frozen brine instead of mysis. He doesn't usually eat brine, but I thought that I'd try again since they are softer and smaller than mysis. He was all over them. Since they are smaller and softer, he was able to get some down. I fed him again a few hours later, and he seemed more to hunt even more eagerly and his snick seemed a bit stronger. Wish me luck! Maybe I'll be able to bring him round. I'm considering doing a hyposalinity dip. Do you think that will help or do I just need to order some antibiotic meds? If I do the hypo dip, what salinity..1.011? For ten minutes?

 

[family reefer]

I can't help. I have no experience with the little guys. I have a friend who just cycled a new 24 gal bio cube in order to keep horses. She just added the clean up crew and is waiting another week ( water tests) before adding them. I will follow the thread in order to possibly offer help to her . Good luck! Scott

 

[lenny]

Glad to hear the seahorse is doing a little better with the eating. I also would recommend trying some of the basic medicated treatments to try to alleviate whatever is causing the spotting. If you look online, you might be able to find pictures and identify the problem... once you identify it, you would be able to better treat it then just giving it the old "lets treat it for everything and hope for the best" plan.

You might want to go to seahorse.com and pose your question there. There's a few world renowned seahorses experts, as well as some very knowledgable hobbyists who respond quickly to any postings, and they might have some good information for you.

If you are feeding the brine shrimp, make sure you enrich or "gut-load" them before feeding, otherwise they have no real nutritional value, which is fine for a while, but could be detrimental in the long run. If you don't enrich it, it's like the equivalent of us just eating popcorn for our main nutritional input, which though fun and tasty... doesnt really help keep us alive for long periods of time.

Good luck, and keep us posted with what's going on with the little bugger!