Real's Seahorse Diary

[lokey]

So, anyone know what's the cause of the GBD?

And how do you prevent it?

[acedophin]

Hi Lokey,

The most likely culprit would be the powerhead or filter which creates very fine bubble in the water. Take a look at your tank to confirm. Prevention to it would be removing the powerhead or adding a sponge at the outlet of the return. Anyway weak current flow is much prefer by SH. They can take their own sweet time hunting for food instead of hanging for their dear life.

[real]

from my experience with GBD, it is due to gas saturation as acedophin described. Diamox is said to be very good at curing GBD, I have not tried it though.

And I think I have found the easiest way to cure it!!! I remove the infected SH to a hospital tank with no airline supply at all, feeding as normal. After several days, I observed that the bubbles on the SH tail subsided!!! I have tried this method twice, 1 on a male H.kuda (as mentioned before) and 1 on a female H.comes (recently), both recovered. Try it at your own risk!

Note that GBD may recur after some time. So reducing air bubble in tank is the ultimate solution. For this reason, protein skimmer MAY not be suitable for SH tank, just my opinion.

In seahorse.org, this problem is not called GBD, they called it gas saturation. GBD is another problem which until now the experts still have no conclusion on its cause.