Seahorse Quarantine/Hospital Tank

typicalwhiteazn · Mar 29, 2013

One of my friend's seahorse died the other day and said it was eating the day before and suddenly died. She saw a whitish flaky slime on it's body. Something I'm familiar with too 'cause I've lost a few in the past like that. When I got home, i found one of mine (they were all from the same clutch) had died too, but it looked healthy (minus the being dead part) no signs of flaky or pealing skin and had been eating the day before.

Anyways, i want to play it safe and put them all in a quarantine/hospital tank. What are my options? Do I hyposalinity? Do I medicate? If medicate, which drugs and how much?

whats the best route to throw 'em in a tank for 2-3 weeks before reintroducing them into the display again?

redfishbluefish · Mar 29, 2013

Not a seahorse keeper, but you might want to look HERE.

SeahorseKeeper · Mar 30, 2013

What type of seahorses are they? Tank info? How old are the seahorses? Are the parent seahorses captive bred? What are they being fed?

typicalwhiteazn · Apr 1, 2013

SeahorseKeeper said:
What type of seahorses are they? Tank info? How old are the seahorses? Are the parent seahorses captive bred? What are they being fed?

They are tank raised Kuda seahorses, about 2.5 inches from tip to tip. Right now they are in a 5 gallon tank plumped into a 100 gallon system. Hopefully I'll be able to move them into their own 28 gallon nano cube once I finish some other projects.

Right now, the remaining 5 look super healthy and eat like pigs. Feeding them mysis shrimp with Kent Marine Vitamin C and Garlic.

If I start seeing their skin flake up and excessive breathing like in the past, what's the best treatment? Should I QT with copper and anti-bacterial?

BrooksReef · Apr 1, 2013

Those seahorses should not be kept in a 5g tank. No matter what it is plumbed into. That could be problem number one. A pair needs at LEAST 30 gallons. And she has 5 in a 5g??

typicalwhiteazn · Apr 1, 2013

BrooksReef said:
Those seahorses should not be kept in a 5g tank. No matter what it is plumbed into. That could be problem number one. A pair needs at LEAST 30 gallons. And she has 5 in a 5g??

I understand your concern, but these are Juvi not 8+ inch adults. when swinging around they are only like 1.5 inch with their tails coiled up. They are currently in a 6 x 2 x 1 frag tank (approx 40 gallon), but fenced off to a small quadrant thats around 5+ gallon of space so that the mp40 and flow dont blast them away. They spend most of their days hanging on dead seafan branches anyways. Benefits of that setup is that it concentrates their food rather than having it float off into the sump. So far successful with them eating and these guys have a great appetite.

revhtree · Apr 1, 2013

SeahorseKeeper · Apr 1, 2013

typicalwhiteazn said:
They are tank raised Kuda seahorses, about 2.5 inches from tip to tip. Right now they are in a 5 gallon tank plumped into a 100 gallon system. Hopefully I'll be able to move them into their own 28 gallon nano cube once I finish some other projects.

Right now, the remaining 5 look super healthy and eat like pigs. Feeding them mysis shrimp with Kent Marine Vitamin C and Garlic.

If I start seeing their skin flake up and excessive breathing like in the past, what's the best treatment? Should I QT with copper and anti-bacterial?

They are tank raised and not tank bred, correct? Are you running ferric oxide on the tank? Can you tell about the system in detail? What temp is the tank at?

Whatever you do, I would not use copper or hyposalinity. Seahorses don't handle this well.