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Feeding stations...


cMidd

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I just use a small glass bowl at the top of my highest piece of rock. You can't really see it back there and it works great! It's so cute to see all the horses line up at the trough for feeding time :) . People use all different types of feeding stations though, so just try whatever interests you. Seahorses need to be fed at least twice per day. I don't know about what feeding times are best, I just do mid-morning and early evening. Mine don't tend to eat for a while after waking up, so I try to wait a while after the lights come on, and be sure to feed them well before the lights go off.

HTH,

Kim

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The best I've seen was a guy who used a soap dish (the type you mount in your shower / on the wall) attached to a MagFloat. This way it's in when you want it, and not when you don't - less of a permanent eye sore this way, and you can position it anywhere you want.

If you wanted something lighter weight / smaller, take a plastic measuring spoon of 1/2 cup or 1 cup size & superglue it to a MagFloat with about 1-2" of handle on the spoon. This way, the size of the measuring spoon is large enough to allow for some holes to be drilled along the edge of the spoon, and on the handle - so the horses can grab on with their tails.

Hope that helps!

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  • 2 months later...

So I'm thinking of creating a feeding station for my dwarf sea horses - but they have to eat live brine shrimp. There is not a lot of information out there about this idea. What I've read so far are ideas on how to maintain copepods for mandarins. Creating rubble piles, a container with small holes, a small mesh pouch. The idea I liked the most was the mesh because I thought it was the least obtrusive. The mesh pouch was designed to that the mesh was small enough to keep the brine shrimp in, but large enough for the sea horses to "suck" them out. I think this person was doing this with adult brine shrimp however, cause I'm feeding the baby brine and haven't found a mesh small enough. On another idea, I bought a $2 bird house water column to put live copepods/brine shrimp in and then lower this into the tank. I was hoping the copepods would stay inside the container longer, but most were out and into the tank within 1 minute. I'm going to try placing mesh over the opening in this bird waterer to see if that will hold the copepods/brine shrimp in. I like this waterer (see attached picture) because I believe the sea horses will be able to hitch onto the outlet. Haven't put this together yet with the mesh. Do you guys think it'll work? My primary goal is to cut down on the bioload of wasted/left over shrimp. I put so much in so they can access them most of the day, but it's only a two gallon tank and the brown algae is starting to grow on the LR. Any other ideas or success stories on a feeding station for live foods?

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Well anything is worth a shot. The only thing I can think of is the water would get stagnant in the tube. Are you thinking of leaving it in all the time?

I don't know if this helps at all, but when I was raising fry I would put the bbs in the water, let everyone eat, turn the lights off in the bathroom where the tank was so it was dark, then shine a bright flashlight in one spot in the tank. I'd come back a little bit later and suck out all the left over bbs with a hard airline tube. The bbs are attracted to the light and I could get them all pretty efficiently.

Good luck, you never know what'll work for you and your tank until you try :crab:

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I was going to change it out once or twice a day. Essentially the same feeding schedule I have now but including a way to take out left over shrimp (and monitor feeding habits more effectively). Flashlight and siphon are a great idea! Of course, I'm too lazy to actually try it right now, but if my mesh station doesn't work, at least I know of a method that will.

Thanks for sharing :)

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tried it today. The goby and shrimp came out and ate some bbs from under the waterer - but the sea horses stayed in their hitching spots throughout the tank. I even tried to corral a couple of them and they wanted nothing to do with it. I decided it wouldn't be nice to make them go without dinner, so I ended up dosing the entire tank again. I'm going to give it another try tomorrow - but I doubt they will go for it. The last thing i'm going to try and am in the process of making is a completely mesh feeding station that maybe I can drop into one of their favorite hitching spots. Really not sure if it'll work, but we'll see. Any other ideas or clean up suggestions are appreciated!

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  • 7 months later...

My favorite bowl was an upturned abalone shell. In one of the holes I stuck an airtube that ran under the sand then up one corner of the tank. I used a syringe and forced shrimp down the tube and would pop out into the bowl. A completely natural looking bowl and a clean dry way to put shrimp into the bowl.

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