Quote:
Originally Posted by
chappy http:///forum/thread/387056/general-feeding-question#post_3402837
Please: I would lke to know your ideas on feeding SHs. I will be feeding frozen foods, ( all I know for sure ) Here are my questions. What do you feed? How often? Do you enrich? Your opinions of Selco, Vibrance, any other products? Do all your pumps need to be turned off? for how long? do you remove any uneaten food, or leave for CUC?
Do you ever feed live food for treats or for hunt drive ?
I know this is a lot of questions and I hope will generate alot of good ideas and well as kill a lot of old myths
Hi,
LOL... When it comes to feeding our critters, we each have our own way...here is mine:
I feed my 4 Erectus horses every morning and every evening. 7:00am and 6:00pm (
have missed feedings, and time varies, this is the USUAL times) In the beginning..LOL...I lived by the seahorse's schedule..I didn't even leave the house unless I could get home on time to feed them.
I feed my seahorses one cube of Hikari brand frozen Mysis shrimp, it seems to be a cleaner food than other brands, first I soak the food to thaw it out in RO water. Then I take a net and pour the thawed shrimp into the net. Then I pour RO water over it again to rinse it. Then I invert the net over another cup and pour saltwater over it from the SH tank...this gets the food off of the net and back into a cup.
I let the food soak in the saltwater cup about 5 minutes to let the food settle to the bottom. I then shut down the pumps. I have everything (overflow, return pump and air pumps) on a single power strip so all I have to do is hit the red button and everything except the lights go off. (this is handy as an emergancy shut off too, in case pumps fail for whatever reason)
I then use a 1 inch clear rigid tube. (purchased it online) I put that in the tank into the feeding dish. The seahorses know the tube and gather around it and peck at the shrimp they can't get to yet. I pour the shrimp from the cup into the tube, and hold it until the food settles to the bottom and then I remove the tube. The food remains behind.
I would love to remove the extra food, but the horses wallow the dish and it floats off...I purchased two yellow clown gobies, and a hectors goby, besides all kinds of snails to eat the extra food that is wasted. I still landed up with hair algae. The horses move away from the food station when there is no more to eat and I wait and watch because they kind of hunt around the outside of the dish for more...they know there are messy too, and go looking for what drifted away.
Between 1/2 hour to a full hour I leave the pumps off...mostly because I get busy with other things...I turn the pumps on and any food that goes floating the horses will chase a little bit and eat, but mostly it's gone by then.
I seeded the tank with amphipods months before I added the horses. So I had a good population of them, and with a refugium I hope to keep them supplied. They are always on the back wall hunting so I know the horses eat them. Also during the 4 day black out, when my horses were not being fed right, 3 remained chubby and the one that hung out away from the wall looked emacipated and near death, even he pulled through, I believe they were surviving on the amphipods.
I was doing biweekly water changes but have started to do weekly because of the hair algae. Which is unsightly for now, but macros are taking over and the HA losing ground. The parameters are perfect, the macros are feeding on the extra nutrients the waste produces..... my Seachem nitrate kit shows a light pink when nitrates are at zero...the pink in the test for the SH tank is so pale I have to really look for it. My 90g is a zero too, and it has a pink that is easy to see. So HA or not, it's a happy tank.
I have never enriched their food. I didn't even think of it until your post....so I also wait for more ideas on how to do things.
