dwarf seahorse

[ssminnow81]

whats the best thing to feed dwarf seahorse? how often? whats better a 20 gallon high or long? and i know they dont like strong flow but should you have any type of powerhead in the tank?

[rayjay]

Dwarf seahorses are best suited for a nanno tank. You can put 20 or 30 in a 5g tank no problem. Don't use power heads but instead use open ended air lines for water movement.
Dwarfs H. zosterae will only eat (long term) live food such as baby brine shrimp or appropriately sized pelagic pods and newborn mysids.
As cultures of pods and mysids would have to be enormous to support even a small tank of dwarfs, the brine shrimp are the primary food source with anything else just being a bonus.
A lot of people feed newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii, but you can lengthen the short lifespan of the dwarfs by enrichment of the nauplii before feeding to the dwarfs.
After hatching the decapped cysts, rinse and place in fresh salt water for another day and then enrich using Dan's Feed W or WO Beta Glucan.
Blend the enrichment for at least two minutes in water and add sparingly to the enrichment container. Store the remainder of the blended enrichment for up to a couple of days in the refrigerator. After 12 hours, replace the salt water and enrichment with new and go another 12 hours.
If you just do it for 12 hours, they will be gut loaded, but if you repeat the process for another 12 hours, they will have assimilated enrichment into the nauplii tissue making them more nutritious.
After feeding to the dwarfs, remove the leftover uneaten nauplii after a period of time, (I do it after about one hour) so that when you add the next feeding they will only be feeding on enriched nauplii, not nauplii with depleted enrichment.
You can hatch out enough brine at a time to last 4 or 5 days, feeding 2 to 3 times a day.
Feeding density has to be sufficient to allow hitching dwarfs to catch food as it swims by their position as usually they are too lazy to hunt food down like fish do.
If you were to use a large tank you would be wasting sooo much brine shrimp in order to get sufficient density and making more work in the removing of excess between feedings.

[ssminnow81]

thanx for the info