A seahorse diary

A brine shrimp egg is actually called a cyst.  It is very, very tiny -- a can full of these cysts looks like a can full of coarse brown powder.

To feed a small herd (about 6) adult dwarf seahorses, you will need to hatch about a 1/2 teaspoonful per hatch.  Doesn't sound like a lot, but remember how tiny the cysts are!  One hatch should last about 2 days.  To keep the hatches going, decapsulate about a tablespoonful of brine shrimp cysts per week.  You can decapsulate them all at once. 

Why decapsulate?  Because there is a risk that undecapsulated brine shrimp cysts may introduce hydroids into your aquarium, and hydroids can destroy your entire herd of dwarf seahorses.  Another compelling reason is that if your dwarves reproduce, and you accidentally put any unhatched, undecapsulated cysts in your tank, the little ones may eat them and choke on them.  Yet another advantage of decapping is that it sometimes decreases hatching time by up to 50% -- sometimes as fast as 12 to 16 hours instead of the usual 24.  This can be reassuring if you ever have to hatch in a hurry -- and you will eventually have to do that.

There are many different techniques, many of them employing so much equipment that the process seems daunting.  I found a fairly simple routine here: http://www.attention-to-details.com/newslog/34h-instructions-for-decapsulating-and.asp 

The book Dwarf Seahorses in the Aquarium by Alisa Wagner Abbott also contains easy instructions for decapsulating brine shrimp cysts.

Here's my own method, which is almost identical to the one in the Abbott book.  Have on hand:

Glass measuring cup that measures at least one quart (4 cups, or 32 ounces) of liquid
1 tablespoon brine shrimp cysts
2 cups tap water
aquarium air pump and airline tubing (no air stone necessary!)
some kind of clip that will fit over both the airline tubing and the side of the measuring cup - a large paperclip will do if that's all you have
1 bottle plain chlorine bleach (I've also tried hydrogen peroxide bleach, which worked, but was not quite as good)
kitchen timer
some kind of dechlorination product meant for aquarium use (Prime is good)
brine shrimp net*
sea salt
a small plastic container with a lid

Add two cups of tap water to your glass measuring cup.  Add 1 tablespoon brine shrimp cysts.  Put in the airline tubing, fixing it to the side of the measuring cup with a clip of some kind, and plug in the air pump.  Aerate for one hour. 

At the end of the hour, turn off the air pump and add 3/4's to 1 cup of bleach to the water/cysts solution.  Turn the air pump back on.  Set the timer for 10 minutes.  During those minutes you should see the cysts change color, finally settling on a light yellow-tan or orange tone.  When this happens (usually around ten minutes) turn the air pump off and quickly add the declorination product (double strength, at least!).  Stir that around and then slowly pour the entire solution through a brine shrimp net*.  Gently rinse the netted cysts in tap water until you are sure you don't smell any more chlorine.  Have some kind of container underneath the net so you don't lose too many cysts.

Fill your plastic container about half full with a brine solution (about 1 tablespoon sea salt per cup of tap water), and put the decapsulated cysts into the solution.  Cover the container and put it in the refrigerator immediately.  The cysts should keep about 1 week.  Use about 1/2 teaspoon of cysts per hatch for a small herd of ponies.  You can use the same hatching procedure you normally use, but expect the hatch to go a bit faster.

This is the simplest method I've found, and it is effective and relatively safe.  Just be sure you don't inhale the chlorine any more than necessary, and of course don't get it on your eyes, skin, or clothes.  Plastic gloves and even goggles aren't a bad idea to wear for this procedure.

*A note on brine shrimp nets: most of them are useless for decapsulation.  The reason for this is that most of these nets seem to be designed to hold adult brine shrimp instead of tiny decapsulated cysts.  If you try the decapsulation procedure with an average brine shrimp net, you will lose most or all of the cysts in the rinse process. 

To test a brine shrimp net before you buy, put your finger behind the net.  The net should be almost entirely opaque -- you should just barely see the color of your finger if you can see it at all.  If you can see your finger easily, the net is no good for decapsulation.  Try to buy a net from a vendor who also specializes in brine shrimp cysts.  If you really can't find a good net, use paper towels instead.

This procedure applies to both regular and decapsulated cysts.

The easiest process is to have a hatchery on hand and follow the instructions.  But if you are completely on your own because your hatchery has no instructions (or only has instructions for its own hatching mix, which you don't have), try this:

2 cups of untreated tap water (leave the chlorine and chloramine in!), or enough water to fill the hatchery as specified
1/4 teaspoon refrigerated cysts, either decapsulated or not (assuming your herd is 6 adult ponies or smaller)
1 tablespoon sea salt per 2 cups of water*
1/4 teaspoon Epsom salt or baking soda per 2 cups of water*
air pump and airline tubing, if your hatchery requires these
some sort of lighting above the hatchery
a warm room, or a seedling heat mat, or maybe even a small aquarium heater if your room is cold

*If you want to bypass measuring and mixing the Epsom salts/baking soda and sea salt, just get a small bag of dry saltwater mix meant for a marine aquarium.  In the U.S., a mix from a company called Oceanic is sometimes available in 1.45 lb. bags.  Use one tablespoon of this mix per 2 cups of water.  If you can't find the Oceanic product, Instant Ocean sells a small box of saltwater mix that is available in almost every pet shop that carries marine-tank products.  This will work equally as well.

Put the water, cysts, salt, and Epsom salts or baking soda together in your hatchery and turn on the air pump (if your hatchery requires one; I always have better luck hatching bbs in hatcheries that do require or at least make room for aeration).  Have some sort of light source over the hatchery; it need not be any particular intensity and doesn't have to be on 24 hours a day.  Twelve to fourteen hours of light should suffice.  All you want to do is give the bbs a light to swim toward; in my experience, the light has no effect on how many of the cysts actually hatch.

What makes a big difference is temperature.  Make sure the room the hatchery is in is not "cold" (under 78F counts as cold for the purpose of hatching brine shrimp).  If it is, use an inexpensive aquarium heater in the hatchery, or a seedling heat mat under the hatchery.  If you try to hatch cysts in a cold environment, you run the risk of a failed hatch, or at least a very slow and light hatch.  In my experience, brine shrimp cysts seem to respond well to heat -- but of course, don't overdo it.  Keep the water temperature above 78 degrees, but less than 90 degrees (both Fahrenheit).

In 12 to 24 hours, you should see baby brine shrimp swimming around.  Your hatchery should provide a mechanism for removing the bbs without also gathering too many unhatched cysts (if you have not decapsulated your cysts) in the process.  With some, this is a built-in strainer; with others it's a small bottle of fresh water at the top of the hatchery.

With a small hatchery, you will need to start a new hatch every two to three days.  Because of this, it's best to run two or three hatcheries with one at its peak hatch one day, and the other at its peak the next, etc.  The peak of the hatch (not the beginning of the hatch) usually occurs between 25 to 35 hours after the hatch is started, with a fast decline thereafter.  Yes, this means you may have to start a new hatch every day, or at least every other day -- but it only takes 5 minutes or less once you've gotten used to doing it :-).  Again, it simplifies matters even more to have 2 or more hatcheries running at the same time, on alternating schedules.

In a pinch, you can sometimes get by with just adding a fresh load of cysts to a hatch that is already in progress.  But I wouldn't make a habit of this, as bacteria tend to start building up in the water, and some of these can be harmful.  At the very least, they can get smelly.  Because of this, it's best to rinse, scrub (never use soap) and dry a hatchery before starting a new hatch.

Don't worry about feeding the baby brine shrimp.  They don't have mouths!

If you are making your own hatchery (which I haven't done, because home-made hatcheries are pretty ugly and I have nowhere to hide one!), or if you need more detailed instructions, see this:  http://saltaquarium.about.com/library/blank/bl_DIY_Brine_Shrimp_Hatching.htm

Addressed here are the Brine Shrimp Artemia Hatching Dish sold by Brine Shrimp Direct (BSD), and the vintage Longlife Brine Shrimp Hatchery which has been sold on Ebay at very low prices over the past few years.

I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but I have to mention it: these two products are identical.  The only difference I've noted is that the BSD dish is entirely black, which for my aging eyes makes it a bit harder to see the bbs.  The Longlife dishes I have are blue and gray, and they come equipped with an air stone and a length of stiff plastic airline tubing.  If you get a Longlife dish, I suggest discarding the air stone as it is ancient, brittle, and likely won't work (and probably will crumble) when you try to use it.  You may want to throw out that stiff airline tubing as well, as it forces the air stone up against the hatchery housing and makes a ton of noise.  Replace them with flexible airline tubing and the tiniest, most slender airstone you can find. 

BSD claims that you don't need any aeration to make the cysts hatch, but I got a rather meager hatch from just putting cysts in the dish and waiting.  Then again, we were going through a cold weather snap without heat and the room was cold.  But anyway, as there is an inlet for an airline tube in the dish (the BSD dish has this, just as the Longlife dish does), I put in an airline with an air stone, attached to an air pump.  When I did this, the production of baby brine shrimp picked up tremendously in spite of the room temperature, although it's still better when the room is warm.

Both dishes come equipped with a little cup with fine mesh at the bottom; this sits in the center of the dish and serves as a brine shrimp net.  The bbs hatch in the outer portion of the dish and then swim toward the light coming from the hole in the top of the dish.  They end up in the cup and you remove the cup and feed the captured bbs to your fish -- in our case, seahorses.  This usually works fine, and keeps the unhatched cysts and shells well away from your bbs harvest -- as long as you don't add too much water to the dish, in which case the cysts will float all over the place. 

Each dish takes about 2 cups of tap water, and about 1 tablespoon of saltwater mix.  If you find you haven't used enough water, little distilled water can be gently added after the hatch starts to enable the bbs to swim to the center more easily.  If you've used too much water, just be careful not to include too many cysts in your harvest.  You may be able to get them out of the way by blotting the visible surface of the water with a paper towel before you remove the cup of insert the pipette (see below).

Nowadays I don't use the cups for anything but help in holding the cysts back (there's also a plastic insert that goes in just after you add the water and salt mix and before you put in the cysts; this also helps keep the cysts away from the center of the dish as long as your water level isn't too high).  I did use the cups for several months to transport bbs to the tank, but then began to have a lot of trouble with them.  You see, the mesh at the bottom clogs eventually and keeps clogging more and more often no matter how well you clean it.  This means you have to wait for minutes or hours for the water to drain out of the cup so you can serve the bbs to your fish.  In my case, eventually the mesh weakened from my attempts to clean it, and separated from the cup.  It's still hanging on, but as I said, I don't use the cups for siphoning purposes anymore.  I just use them as an extra barrier to keep cysts out of the bbs harvest.  (Note: if you are routinely decapping your brine shrimp cysts, having unhatched cysts in the harvest is far less of a concern.)

So what do I do?  I siphon the bbs out of the center of the dish -- or more accurately, out of the cup in the dish -- with a plastic pipette (these are inexpensive and readily available online; just Google "plastic pipette"), and strain out the water back into the dish through a very dense brine shrimp net.  If you can't find a good brine shrimp net and want to try this technique, a piece of strong paper towel or a brand-new, unwashed, closely woven handkerchief loosely draped over an unwashed plastic cup and fastened with a rubber band...or even just draped over the dish itself if your aim is good...will do. 

Once I see a good bbs harvest in the net (a "good harvest" is a very visible orange spot in the bottom of the net), I swish the net around in the seahorse tank to release the bbs. 

You can refill a dish with cysts once, and then you must clean it.  Total usage time should come to no more than 4 days between cleanings.  If you allow the water (and the old unhatched cysts) to remain longer, it will start to smell.  In cleaning, never use soap of any kind (I don't recommend using the dishwasher!).  Just rinse the dish in hot water and scrub it with a paper towel.  The interior surface will eventually get grainy, and this is something about the dish that you'll just have to learn to love, because you won't be able to remove it without doing damage.

I'm guessing that each dish has a life expectancy of about 2 years under constant use, as long as they are not dropped and you don't put anything heavy on top of them.

If you choose to hatch your bbs in these dishes and have a small herd of 6 or fewer adult dwarf seahorses, I recommend running 3 dishes simultaneously on different refill schedules and keeping an extra dish on hand to be used in case of a dish becoming damaged, or your bbs hatching needs suddenly increasing (the latter of which can happen quickly with dwarf seahorses).

As you see, I have had to find ways around some problems.  But after having used these dishes continuously for over six months, I feel they are a worthwhile product and will keep using them to hatch bbs.  I encourage you to investigate using these dishes in place of more cumbersome set-ups if you only have a small herd of ponies to feed, and hope my insights help you. 

Here (in no particular order) are some of the more unusual searches I've noted on my stats page; I'll be adding more as time goes by:

(Q) Why should I decapsulate my own brine shrimp cysts when decapped cysts are available in the store?

(A) The vast majority of commercially decapped cysts will not hatch (see next question).  The ones that will are fragile, and you'll get a large bottle that will only keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks -- meaning most of it will go to waste.  What will make you feel sick is the expense of this bottle of cysts that is going to waste -- the price is sometimes as high as $30.00 (if it's cheaper than that, assume that you are buying non-hatching cysts).  Decapping your own cysts is really, really inexpensive, causes less waste, is easy, and doesn't take that long.

(Q) Can I feed my seahorses unhatched decapsulated brine shrimp cysts?

(A) No.  If you can get your ponies to eat the cysts (and that's a big if), it may serve to fill their bellies for a while.  However, the nutritional quality of unhatched cysts is starting to be questioned, as some hobbyists maintain that the cysts pass through even the most efficient digestive systems untouched -- so it could be like feeding your ponies junk food.  Since seahorses have such incredibly inefficient digestive systems, they need all the nutrition they can get.  Junk food really has no place in their diet.

(Q) Where do I buy large quantities of brine shrimp cysts?  The stores only have tiny containers.

(A) Go to an online vendor such as Brine Shrimp Direct or the famous San Francisco Bay Brand company.  You may even try your luck on Ebay.  Expect good brine shrimp cysts to be expensive.  In 2009, after 2 years of bad harvests, prices for high-hatch-rate cysts have risen to about $50.00 (U.S.) per pound -- if you can get them at all.  In years like this, it's best to get lower-hatch-rate cysts and decapsulate them, and use optimal hatching techniques (especially 80 degree heat!) to get as many to hatch as possible.

The good news is that you can refrigerate your cysts for a few years and they will still hatch!  And a pound of brine shrimp cysts will be enough to serve your dwarf seahorses every day for at least 6 months.  Just remember to refrigerate, (not freeze) the cysts.  If you leave them at room temperature, they may never hatch at all.

(Q) Are those premixed packets of brine shrimp and salts any good?

(A) I've had varying results with them.  Sometimes the hatch is fantastic; other times it's a total failure.  I'm guessing these packets are meant for those who only hatch brine shrimp occasionally as a treat for their fish or corals.  For someone who is hatching brine shrimp every day, however, these premixed packets can quickly become prohibitively expensive.  It's better -- and just as easy -- to mix your own brine shrimp water additives (as seen in hatching paragraph above), and cysts.

(Q) What do I do if my brine shrimp hatch fails?

(A) If you have live-food-only dwarf seahorses, always keep a bottle of Instant Baby Brine Shrimp on hand and routinely feed it to them twice a week (to get them used to it; also to use it up before it expires).  This food will cover you in case of an emergency like a failed hatch, or perhaps on a day when you're going to be away, or are ill or just plain busy, and can't work on hatching bbs.  You can also try to fool them with frozen bbs (or perhaps even frozen adult brine shrimp, if you are feeding adult dwarf seahorses and can't get frozen bbs). Another option is target-feeding frozen cyclops to the ponies.  However, this is laborious, and a few individuals won't accept it unless you want to invest the time in training your seahorses.  A third option is to cultivate a colony of copepods for your tank.  You will probably have to do this in a separate tank, however, if you don't already have a large colony established in your seahorse tank before you purchase your herd.

(Q) Does baby brine shrimp provide good nutrition for seahorses?

(A) In the long term this food does not provide adequate nutrition.  In the wild, dwarf seahorses feed on much richer fare (mostly copepods); baby brine shrimp, although they do have nutritional value, just don't compare.  Also, while you will likely be feeding your ponies freshly-hatched brine shrimp most of the time, you should know that the older a brine shrimp gets, the less nutritious it is.

You can try to raise a colony of pods in your tank, but this is a slow process and if you begin to do this after you have purchased your herd, your pod colony will never catch up with the ponies' feeding demands (I've been lucky in this respect; I had a large colony of pods in my biOrb before I bought my ponies, and they haven't yet managed to eat their way through the pods).  For most dwarf-seahorse owners, baby brine shrimp are simply the most convenient way to feed a herd live food every day.  But because of the nutritional issue, be prepared to add a drop of Selcon or Zoecon to your brine shrimp water before serving the baby brine shrimp to the seahorses.  Don't overdo it, but a little bit will help enhance the baby brine shrimp and make them healthier for the ponies.

(Q) What else will a dwarf seahorse eat?  Will it eat any frozen foods?  Dry foods?

(A) Some tank-bred dwarf seahorses are trained to eat frozen baby brine shrimp and other frozen foods such as cyclops.  There are reports that dwarves who live in tanks with other types of seahorses that eat frozen foods will, in time, mimic the other seahorses' feeding behavior.  I have had success feeding my dwarves the "Instant Baby Brine Shrimp" product, which is actual bbs which has been preserved.  The one thing I have never heard of is a dwarf seahorse eating dry food.

(Q) How much does a dwarf seahorse eat in a day?

(A) Darned if I know, but it has to be a lot.  I do know the babies can eat up to 3000 baby brine shrimp per pony per day!  I've also observed that the adults do little for most of the day except for hitching to something and eating anything tiny that swims by.  So if you have these fish, be prepared to feed, and feed, and feed.

(Q) Are dwarf seahorses endangered?

(A) Not that I've heard; however, all seahorses are threatened by loss of habitat issues, as well as overfishing.  This is particularly true in the Far East, where seahorses are fast disappearing.  But it may be equally true of dwarf seahorses, which are native to the southeastern coasts of the U.S. and also to the waters around the Bahamas, because of loss of habitat coupled with the collection of individuals for the aquarium hobby.  No matter how closely monitored this collection process is, it does have an impact.  Coupled with the accelerating loss of habitat for these fish, the impact could shortly reach the point of devastation in some areas and land our little ponies on the endangered list.  If that happens, all wild collection of these fish will likely cease.

(Q) Will other seahorses eat brine shrimp?

(A) Probably yes -- but only as a snack food.  Bigger seahorses are best maintained on mysis shrimp, or Hawaiian red shrimp.  These days many commercially-available larger seahorses are trained to eat frozen shrimp.  All seahorses require that their food be enhanced with a product such as Selcon or Zoecon at least a few times a week.

(Q) I'm interested in the Zulu-Lulu® seahorse.

(A) Best place to find information on these is from the only vendor who sells them, Ocean Rider: http://www.seahorse.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=28.  I know very little except that these are relatively small seahorses that require a water cooler (a.k.a. "chiller") in their tank.  Other than that, caring for them does not seem much more difficult than caring for other seahorses.  Their scientific name is h. capensis, they are also known as the Knysna seahorse, and they are gravely endangered in the wild.