Sea horses

I just realized that I had not posted any pictures of my current project.
One of the members of the Joliet Reef club breeds seahorses.
She had the opertunity to take a trip out west but had a little problem,
or should I say a bunch of little problems.

She then asked for vollenters to babysit her little problems.
She returned and decided that those of us that helped out might as
well keep them. I started out with about 20 or so of the little buggers
and now have got 4 that are doing great adn growing fast.

These photo were taken right after I got them. or on about the first of april.
At that tiem they were no more than 5 or 6 days old.
They were Eating live baby brine at the time, which is why they have orange stomachs, they just got fed.








These were taken 3 weeks later...







And these were taken 2 days ago. they are now eating all frozen mysis and
brine shrimp and they are ablut 1.25 to 1.5 inches long tip to tip.






there is one hiding in the air bubbles in this one, they hang in the middle of
them then every so often let go and ride the wave up tothe top of the tank.
Then they swim back down to the bottom, Its like a game to them!



I think this one is my favorite....

 

Incredible. I wish I had the guts to set up a seahorse tank.

So she had a new brood just before she left? and you had to rear them?

I'd like to hear more details on how that was

J

 

Got a 4 gal. pico setup sitting on shelf where it has been about 3 years...

Thinking about setting up as a horse tank.

You have me motivated...

Good job.

 

Jason,

Details I have.. yes she had to leave and split the brood up between 4 or 5 of us. As I said I got about 20 or so may have been 24 not sure. They are Hippocampus erectus.

When she gave them to be she gave me a large culture of baby brine shrimp and I had to start 2 cultures when I got them home. I found that keeping a steady supply of shrimp alive was rather difficult as some would hatch faster than others but I never did run completely out.

Now you might think that you just toss the brine shrimp in and thats that... well no, you have to enrich the brine shrimp about 5 or 6 hours before you feed. So like any good mother I would get up at 1 am and enrich the shrimp for feeding between 6 or 7, actually I was still awake at 1 so it wasn't a problem.

She recommended feeding 2 time a day or 3 if possible so I feed them 3 times a day because I had lots of help, my whole family helped out. I feel thats the only reason I still have 4 when most other lost them all.

I cleaned the 5.5 gallon tank out by siphoning excess food out every day and doing about 1 gallon water change most days. Once a week I changed all the water because it got kind of nasty.

The hardest part as anyone know was loosing them. it sucked. I was very disheartening to come home in the evening to "well we lost 2 more today" but from what I have read we actually have Beaten the odds by keeping these 4 out of 20 alive.

It was fun and a learning experience for all of us, that can say. It was not the easiest thing I have ever done but I can honestly say it has been really cool to watch them grow. As Matt Pendersen of MOFIB says "You only need to raise one... " and I have 4.

As far as equipment needed, well I used a 5.5 gallon tank, small air pump, sponge filter, and a air stone. Temperature is not a problem as long as you keep your home between 74 and 78 degrees., in fact the cooler the better since most problems are caused by bacteria that lives in warmer water.

I now have two adult seahorses with 2 more coming shortly, Eventually I should hopefully have 2 pairs and my own broods soon. There is a great web site call seahorse.com that has tons and tons of info about all kinds of seahorses.

 

Actually Omard it is recommend that you use nothing smaller than a 15 tall for a pair and a 29 gallon for 4 full grown horses due to the height requirements, they require lots of depth to be happy.

For dwarf seahorses that would be a good sized tank but unfortunately they require live food, freshly hatched live food at that. they are very labor intensive, very. They are very cool though...