Seahorse Pouch Emphysema

[leliataylor]

Yesterday one of my males was floating and his pouch was large and odd shaped. I decompressed his pouch, flushed it and placed antibiotics inside. He immediately swam to his mate after the procedure. This morning he is eating like a pig and courting his mate. Has anyone had any experience with a male becoming pregnant shortly after experiencing pouch emphysema? This is the first time I have encountered this problem.

[Richard]

I've never dealt with pouch enphysema. I had a pregnant male that looked like he had it but it was an infection from dead fry in the pouch (filled with pus yuck). I ultimately lost him.

Did you use diamox in the pouch or another antibiotic?

Great to hear he recovered quickly though.

[Headless_donkey]

We dealt with pouch infection as well. We did not win. Congrats on the recovery.

Seahorse sickness is REALLY hard to fix. We have a whole medicine cabinet of seahorse meds.

[leliataylor]

So far, he is still swimming normally and eating great. By the time seahorses display overt signs of disease it is usually too late. In his case his pouch started looking lumpy and larger at the base and within hours he was having trouble swimming. I expelled a large amount of gas and his eggs. He was 7 days pregnant. Better to loose the eggs than the male. I will continue to monitor him closely. I hope he takes a week or two off from getting pregnant. She should not be ready to mate for another week.

[leliataylor]

I think I found the source. The connection between my power head and my protein skimmer was releasing micro bubbles, almost invisible, into the tank. This created a hyper oxygenated environment. I replaced the powerhead and no more problems.