Had a scare....thought I had a dead seahorse

Yesterday morning when I fed my seahorses I noticed the female wasn’t there at the feeding dish; I wasn’t worried because she hides. With three males in the tank she sometimes will only eat once a day, so if she didn’t eat at the AM feeding she will at the PM for sure.

Well PM rolls around and no little girl, just three males making puffy faces at each other…For a solid hour I looked for her in the tank and couldn’t find her. This morning I was going to move rocks to find her body….at the AM feeding this morning, there she was.

I searched every coral and every crevice and couldn’t find her, I don’t know where she found to hide from her boyfriends, but she is really good at it. Since she didn’t come out to eat she no doubt also found a spot with amphipods…like she did when the power was out. She is a little survivor that’s for sure.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by meowzer 

LOL....Same thing kinda happened to me Flower.....One horse was acting odd and not coming out.....I searched and searched....after finding it I pryed it off the rock it was on thinking it was stuck or dead....it wasn't.....it did this for 2 days, and yesterday all 3 horses were really active again

 

Maybe sometimes they just need some down time   LOL

LOL...I could not find her, and I looked everywhere, even behind the overflow where the amphipods hang out the most. The only places I didn't look was under rocks. I was so sure I needed to find a body.

I can't blame her for hiding, three males following her everywhere showing her their empty pouches and makeing googoo fins at her. She had to be tired.
 

So yours have learned to play dead....I guess that would turn a guy off....

My sea hare has just arrived...UGLY! He is almost as ugly as the hair algae I want him to eat, and it's like 3 inches.

He even has a stubby tail.

He turned his back on me...LOL

This is the little red starfish, I had to get more than the eater because of cost.

Quote:

Originally Posted by meowzer 

OMG I loved my seahare....so ugly they are cute

LOL..he kind of looks like a turd, not quite as turddy looking as a black sea cucumber, but if he grows a little he will look just like one of my dogs droppings after it's been in the sun a day or two.. 

However, I love him for other reasons...he has hung out in one small area since I released him in the tank...3 inches, the width of his body are hair algae free. He's a little lawn mower, he ate the green and left the red macro it was growing on...At this rate he will have the tank clear in no time and my beautiful red macros will shine again.

I'm taking pictures, each day to see how long it takes him to clean things up.

Quote:

Originally Posted by meowzer 

LOL...TOLD YA

 

hey....how big is that star (or how small)   LOL.....looks tiny

It's pretty small, about the size of a quarter all streached out. The shipping cost more than the sea hare, a little red pop up note said I had to order at least $24.95 before the order would process, so I got the star to make the price come up. I had one before...fromas are kind of hard to keep alive. They need a very established tank so we will see if it makes it. The parameters are very good in this tank.

I would love to read that article. So post it ASAP. Starfish are hard, for the most part we don't really even know what they eat. The books say algae but it's a guess and the what type they don't know and if you don't have the right stuff in the tank the starfish dies. This seahorse tank seems to be extra good for all kinds of macros, and hair algae..... yet the parameters read as perfect as can be. So whatever algae... I think the star might get lucky.....LOL...I didn't clean off the saehorse tank front just because the starfish was on it...after lights out look at this picture...the snails seem to have also found a favorite spot for the night.

Most froma stars don't make it. Linkia stars are another bad star to try and keep. Serpent and brittles do better in fish tanks. I had a couple of those knobby reds for a few years before they died. They are not supposed to be reef safe but I had no trouble out of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by novahobbies 

Flower, glad to hear your girl was just hiding.  Mine does that from time to time, and she's the only one horse in a relatively small tank!!  Sometimes they just find a REALLY good spot to hide, and I think they know when they do! 

 

I love sea stars too, but I'm so hesitant to get one.  After reading a long article about the difficulties in transport (Lois, I think that article is the same one I read in CORAL a few months back...) and the basic mechanics behind their osmoregulation, I am not sure I'll get another.  I had a chocolate chip star that was just fine in the 55 g tank years ago, but Wife wants a blue Linkia in the 110 when it's properly seasoned.  I just. Don't. Know.

 

My personal suspicion is that they don't eat algae, but they digest the bacterial populations that grow IN the algae.  Just a guess, but I'd be curious to see if anyone has done gastric cavity surveys to find out just what is being processed in these buggers.  Other and smarter minds than mine are on these boards who may already have that info....

 

Oh, BTW...is that green hair algae, or red turf algae in that tank?  I had SUCH a problem with red turf algae at one point in the big tank; I'm curious if your hare would eat it.

This is a 30g long tank so its easy to reach to pluck and prune macros....In my 90g I would not want this stuff growing  anywhere but a refugium. Actually I like the red turf algae it looks good on the back wall with the bubble algae and it comes up easy, and the horses turn red. Removing it removes nitrates and phosphates just like any macro. I also have some Halmenia sp and Halimeda opuntia and Botryocladia. It does look like it eats the red turf but it could just be that where the hair algae is so thick it chocked it out. I rinsed my botryocadia and put what I could salvage in the refugium, it's quite a bit. I also put one of the pieces of Halymenia (red lacy jelly plant) in there, the other piece looks so happy I didn't pluck it...the green Halimeda is attached to a rock with mushrooms and it is just getting started and I don't want to disturb it...the hare may eat it too.

I cleaned a bunch of the hair algae but there is still a ton of it...it got out of control since the black out. I'm not so sure even the sea hare can keep up with the stuff it is so thick and grows so fast. Everything in this tank is so happy and healthy. I cleaned my skimmer cup...it looked like coffee it was so dark and it didn't even smell...I mean nothing bad at all, I was surprised because the skim from the 90g smalls like a sewer. I gag taking it to the toilet to dump and then wash it with a bottle brush I keep for that purpose.

Here are some pictures of the macro algae, it came from a macro place, that's all they sell.

Botryocladia

Halymenia

Halimeda opuntia