Weird coloration on Kuda Seahorse...? Ich? Bacterial Infection?

[td3025]

I could not find a pic of me using the fish bowl as a kreisel style nursery but you can see how I modified the fish bowl. It is drilled in the shoulder so that I could attach an airline tube with a slow constant bubble to create a circular flow. The 1" hole cut in the side of the bowl that is covered with a fine mesh is to allow the aqualifter to feed filtered water into the bowl but let water in the bowl to exit through the screen to be filtered. Also when I would feed the fry I would temorarily remove the aqualifter line so the bbs would stay in the fishbowl. I would let the fry feed for 15 minutes or so then put the aqualifter line back in which then would flush the food out of the nursery to filtered by the skimmer and filter. I used a magnet cleaner to hold the fish bowl nursery in place.

Thank you so much for all the info this helps so much! I still have some time to get it all together since my male isn't carrying just yet (the female has yet to be successful depositing her eggs). From what I understand, Kuda fry feed off of smaller foods like Copepods instead of brine right? This is my main concern. I can go to local fish stores and purchase bottles of Copepods but I don't know exactly how many dozens of bottles I'll be needing. I have some Copepods living in my macro algae field in my seahorse tank currently but definitely not enough for even one feeding for the babies :'( I guess my first concern needs to be creating an appropriate nursery though, which will be my first step and this info helps me so much!

 

[vlangel]

Thank you so much for all the info this helps so much! I still have some time to get it all together since my male isn't carrying just yet (the female has yet to be successful depositing her eggs). From what I understand, Kuda fry feed off of smaller foods like Copepods instead of brine right? This is my main concern. I can go to local fish stores and purchase bottles of Copepods but I don't know exactly how many dozens of bottles I'll be needing. I have some Copepods living in my macro algae field in my seahorse tank currently but definitely not enough for even one feeding for the babies :'( I guess my first concern needs to be creating an appropriate nursery though, which will be my first step and this info helps me so much!

If you want to read a more step by step progression of my baby seahorse raising experience it is documented in my thread: Dawn's 30 gallon XH seahorse tank. The fry arrived on page 11.

You are correct that Kudas need Copepods as a first food. I have attempted to raise copepods but have not had much success so far. My seahorses are erectus and their fry can eat enriched bbs as a first food which is much easier. Even at that I did water changes daily and cleaned and sterilized my bbs cultures every 3 days to guard against bacterial infections. It was a lot of work, fairly costly but was so rewarding in the end.