Seahorse white tail - injuried or tail rot

[Curtisw]

Hi all,

I recently purchased a hippocampus kuda from my LFS last week and all was going well. I've came down this morning and noticed she's was hitched to my heater and thought nothing of it. Did the normal process of feeding her ans then shortly after wards she moved and I noticed the tip of her tail was turning white. Unsure whether this is a injury from the heater or has caught a disease.

Will post water parameters shortly, just finishing them up. Here's an image to help show the issue -

**Updated**
It also looks like there is a white spot on her side too.
Nitrite 0.05
Ammonia 0.2
Nitrate 5
PH
Alkalinity

 

[Curtisw]

PH 8.2
Alkalinity 9
Salinity 1.024
Temperature 80
Other fish in tank are - Pipefish, ruby red dragonet, sand sifter starfish, 3 red legged hermit crabs, 2 blue legged hermit crabs and couple stomatella snails.

 

[vlangel]

Seahorses are often injured by heaters. Unless the temperature is below 68° F the heater is not needed and is best removed. Seahorses should be in temperatures of no higher than 74° F.

At this point I would remove the seahorse and treat in a HT with furan 2 for 10 to 14 days. Infections like that are deadly unless immediately treated.

 

[rayjay]

In addition to treating in a hospital tank with Furan II and heavy aeration, be sure to drop the temperature to 68°F if possible to slow up the bacteria effects until the Furan get to work.
Slowly drop the temp on the display tank, but ALSO, find out WHY you have readings of ammonia and nitrite. These readings BOTH should be at zero, especially the ammonia which can at the least, burn the gills. If large water change doesn't immediately remedy things, add something like Prime or ClorAm-X to bind the ammonia so it doesn't do any damage. Note that some ammonia test kits won't read properly after using these treatments.

 

[Curtisw]

1. I don't have a hospital tank so isn't there a way I can treat the seahorse within the main tank?

2. I believe the level are up because of the feeding. After getting the seahorse the levels did increase. I could be wrong but here's my feeding routine - I feed frozen mysis x2 a day with a turkey baster, any food missed by the seahorse tends to get eaten by the pipefish if the food isn't floating around otherwise the crabs seem to get it. I also put two bags of live food in, this being either rotifers or copepods (based on what the shop has at the time) I put one bag in after doing a water change and the other in the middle of the week.

Is my feeding fine or is that too much and what else could I be doing that causes the levels to rise? Thank so

 

[vlangel]

1. I don't have a hospital tank so isn't there a way I can treat the seahorse within the main tank?

2. I believe the level are up because of the feeding. After getting the seahorse the levels did increase. I could be wrong but here's my feeding routine - I feed frozen mysis x2 a day with a turkey baster, any food missed by the seahorse tends to get eaten by the pipefish if the food isn't floating around otherwise the crabs seem to get it. I also put two bags of live food in, this being either rotifers or copepods (based on what the shop has at the time) I put one bag in after doing a water change and the other in the middle of the week.

Is my feeding fine or is that too much and what else could I be doing that causes the levels to rise? Thank so

Do you have a clean empty salt bucket? I have used those to treat sick seahorses. I just get an artificial plant as a hitch, an air pump and tubing and attach the tubing so that it can not fall out.
You can not ever treat furan 2 or any other antibiotic in the main tank as it kills ALL bacteria, good and bad and it will wipe out your biofilter.

It helps that most of the mysis you feed is either eatten by your seahorse and pipefish but both of those fish snick the mysis into their mouths and mastigate it and much of it (in the form of small particles) comes back out their gills. Also seahorses have very inefficient digestive systems so when it comes out as waste it is not a lot different when it went in since seahorses do not absorb a lot of what they eat. That is why they need to eat often and a lot.

A greater seahorse is probably ignoring the rotifer and copepods since they are so small. They would hunt amphipods if your lfs had those. Copepods are beneficial however as a tank janitor. Rotifer is probably just getting filtered out and I would discontinue that.

I do not think that your feeding is the main problem. I think there is probably something being unintentionally overlooked in your husbandry (tank cleaning). If I were you I would do a heavy duty cleaning, syphoning the sandbed, turkey basting all the rockwork and coral and replace all filter pads or socks when you are done. Then I would do a series of big water changes (50%) every day for at least 3 days in a row to try to get to the source of what is feeding the bad bacteria and also what is causing the ammonia and nitrite spikes. Lastly I would add seachem stability or some sort of live bacteria to build up the biofilter.

 

[rayjay]

I guarantee that if you blast the rocks/decor with water you will most certainly find that the seahorses and other inhabitants DO NOT eat all of the food and detritus.
In addition to that, food waste after being eaten also decays and produces "dirty" water conditions, even when eaten again by smaller life forms that then again produce their wastes.
Your "levels" are up possibly due to a combination of things. Perhaps the cycle had not completed before the additions, or, the bio-filter had not sufficiently established a level to take care of the new/additional feeding the tank needs, and, insufficient husbandry and water changes for the system.
As mentioned, while some adult seahorses may snick on small copepods and such, most will not. Even if they do, it would take an inordinate amount of this small food to be of any nutritional benefit, much like you trying to live on eating individual grains of rice.
As mentioned already, rotifers are much too small, but they also don't control their direction in the waterflow of a seahorse tank and therefore get caught up by the mechanical filtration. Because these rotifers are so small, they decay VERY rapidly, again further degrading the water quality, and, if enough are added compared to the overall volume of water, might cause ammonia presence in a bio-load not yet fully developed for the new conditions.
I personally find that feeding smaller amounts more often works much better.
15 years ago I was feeding two and sometimes three times a day, evolving a few years later to always 3 times a day, to now in the last few years I feed four times daily.
Total weight of food per seahorse per day remains about the same, but now I find less food remaining to be removed.