After many hours/days of research, we where almost convinced that wild seahorses will not eat frozen. Fortunately we have disproved this theory. All of our wild caught seahorses eat frozen without hesitation including all the dwarfs.
The first thing you need to understand about seahorses is they are not very smart. They will actually starve to death if the right type of food is not around. Even if there is plenty of other food all around them. The next thing to understand is what makes them eat. As with most other fish, there is a trigger that will cause them to feed. In some fish it’s sight, smell, shape, vibrations or movements. The trigger for seahorses seems to be mostly with sight and vibrations. Seahorse are born looking for a certain size, shape and movement in their food choices. If they do not see this type of food, in their tiny minds there is no food, even if they can smell it.
So how did we train wild caught seahorses to eat frozen?
It took a couple of months and lots of observation. When we decided to keep seahorse, we caught ghost shrimp and bought brine (3 times a week). They always ate live shrimp. We would throw in some frozen mysid shrimp or other assortment of frozen food to feed the other critters in the tank.
We would feed the tank in the morning and evening. We have plenty of scavenges (ghost, peppermint, cleaner shrimp, flounders, crabs and snails) in the tank to clean up any left overs. We start of with the frozen, then add the brine a few minutes after the frozen was gone. We noticed the seahorses become a lot more active when we added the frozen mysid to the tank. They would drift along totally focused on the the mysid. Since the shrimp where dead they did not wiggle around and the seahorse would not eat it. So each day we started to wait a little longer before we added the brine. And each day they started following the mysid more and more.
About a month had passed and Bonnie finally took the first bite. She followed the floating mysid shrimp about half across the tank. Then she snapped and blew out a little puff of smoke through her gills. I guess she liked it because she ate a few more pieces, then lost interest. The next day we skipped the brine feeding and only feed the thank frozen. Bonnie snapped up a few pieces of mysid and waited. Clyde and Lois snapped up a couple of pieces too. After going all day with only a few pieces of mysid, the evening feeding was a very welcomed sight. Bonnie charged out snapping up mysid, one after another, she just kept on snapping. Clyde and Lois joined in but they did not did do as well. It appears they where having a hard time understanding they can just eat the food that is in front of them. They wanted to hunt down each piece. So they would follow a single mysid shrimp around the tank then finally snap it up. Meanwhile Lucy was the hold out. After a few more days she got the hang of eating frozen, but still is a bit slow. Lucy likes to stare at the bottom of the tank, meanwhile the shrimp float just of her head. Bonnie, Buffy and Snowflake are the champs at eating frozen. They can snap up five or six in row, after eating they look like they just walked out of an all you can eat buffet.
The seahorses still have a hard time eating the mysid shrimp if it is laying on the bottom not moving. They want to see the shrimp at least drifting along and they still follow. While we can not feed them from a small bowl, they readily eat frozen (as long as it moves). None the less this save us lots of time and efforts with managing live food. Not to mention it is much healthier for the seahorse to eat fortified food.
