just lost one of my babies

[denise.gardner]

i have had 7 reidi seahorses now for 9 months everythimg was going well until monday when i spotted steve lying on the bottom of the tank .i moved him to isolation and unfortunatly he passed away last night tried fresh water dip picked up for awhile then died.anyway 3 of the other horses are acting strange hiding in the seaweedbut still eating.all my water checks are spot on so dont know whats up.on the plus side i have raised one of my fry to 3weeks and its eating well on rotifers and copepods im going to start him on sanfrancisco brine shrimp but dont know when to try frozen any ideas.also does anyone want anygrape caulepa as i have tons of it free of charge.:thanks:

[Sailfin]

Hi - sorry to hear that

I'm assuming they're being fed enriched frozen mysis as their main food. Were there any symptoms at all before he died, weak snick, loss of weight, loss of appetite? You say all the water params are fine does that include the oxygen level? Some seahorses (particularly some of the Reidi) can be very suceptable to a drop in O2 levels. I wouldn't worry too much about the others for now unless you start seeing symptoms of something - if they're still eating in their normal manner I would just keep an eye on them.

Well done on the fry front - I personally haven't raised Reidi fry but of the other fry I've raised I have started to introduce enriched frozen cyclops and red plankton after about six (ish) weeks then grated mysis after about 8/9 weeks. Be prepared for them not to even look at it for the first few tries and you'll have to clean it up (i do this within half an hour). I then have a break for a few days then try with the frozen again. I certainly wouldn't worry at this age as long as the brineshrimp is enriched and as newly hatched as you can manage and its taking pods. I feed the brineshrimp within the first hour of hatching to make sure its at its most nutritious (still has the egg yolk). When the fry have grown a bit and can take 2/3/4 day old brineshrimp (enriched) I would start thinking about introducing frozen.

Thats just my tuppence worth from raising other spp of seahorse - Simon has raised Reidi so I'm sure he'll give his input too