Babies!

They are looking great! So Lucky Nemo from the first batch will finally have some little brothers and sisters.

 

Nothing better than 'foals' !!!! Congrats!!!!

 

Well found more babies in the sump again today. I don't even know how they managed it so quick, it's only be 16 days since the last batch. Smaller batch this time again, probably 30-40, I didn't count carefully like I did in the past. The survivor from the first group is doing well at about 6 weeks old now, the second batch at a bit over 2 weeks are doing well, 13 of the 48 are still alive and I haven't had any deaths in the past 6 days so while a couple more may not make it they're all growing and appear to be doing well. I put the new batch in with the 2 week old ones for lack of anywhere else to put them honestly.

Not sure what I'm going to do if they keep having babies every two weeks. I just don't have the tank/setup to support that. If they keep it up I may put a call out to my local fish club (WAMAS) to see if anyone wants to try and raise them and just give new births that I can't handle away to anyone who would like to try.

 

Pictures:


Picture is a bit blurry, he wouldn't stand still for the macro lense to get a good shot.




Shots of the new batch and the one from about 2 weeks ago.


And a shot of the 20G I currently have them all in.

 

You're in WI, right?

C

 

HAHAHAHA He's not far from me! Close to Baltimore or thereabouts, near BWI. WAMAS is awesome. Lots of cool deals at some LFS's. Hope you find members to take the babies!

 

Yeah Wonton has it, I live right outside Baltimore. Really wishing I had more room in my townhouse to setup more tanks.

 

where in wisconsin are you from?

 

new to the forum! but i have seahorses also!

CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEWBIES!!!

THEY ARE ADORABLE!
I sure wish you the best of luck with them :] keep us informed plllease!

 

OMG! That is so neat. I just got into reefing and having a saltwater tank. Have been wanting to for a while and I know that someday, when I have the space and the experience I want to be able to have seahorses. It is amazing what you have done with them. Great job!

 

Well more babies today, my fish tank is like a seahorse factory, it's insane.

I did find out today though that it's been my younger male that has been having all of the babies though. I had thought that he was just filling his pouch with water in reponse to my two older pair breeding but I actually got to watch my younger male release the babies in my 90 gallon, which explains why I could never tell that my older male was pregnent. I just didn't think the younger male was old enough. Not sure how old he was when we got him and a female from Seahorse Source in January but I didn't think he was old enough at all, he's still so tiny compared to my older pair.

Not sure how many there were this time, I had just gotten off a 12 hour night shift and was going to feed the seahorses for their morning meal before I went to sleep when it happened so I just got them out into my breeding tank, fed them from BBS and rotifers, and then went to sleep.

It's been exactely 15 days since he gave birth, so at this point he is literally giving birth almost every 2 weeks like a clock.

Posted on my local groups message board to see if anyone was interested in trying to raise some from the next batch, since it seems obvious I'll have more of them in about 2 weeks and my breeding setup is just past capacity at this point.

 

Here are some pictures:


Here's the little guy from the first batch. He's getting big now and I'm trying to get him onto frozen food, which is proving to be very difficult so far.


A corner of the 20 gallon where a bunch of the babies from the batch 2 days ago are hanging out in.


I believe this guy is from the batch from a month ago.


All of the little guys in a 2 liter soda bottle after I pulled them all out of my fuge.

 

Hey, would you mind if you could give me a step by step way of how you successfully did this??

feel free to send me a message if you don't want to post it on this forum. I have been trying over a year to breed my seahorses and get the babies to survive.

I have no clue what i'm doing wrong :[

 

Well the first question is what type of seahorse do you have SeaStallion, mine are Erectus, which are probably the easiest to breed and raise. Some such as Reidi are pelagic and require a totally different setup from Erectus that have benthic fry that can hitch from birth.

Having said that my setup is relatively simple. I have a 20G tank with a 10G sump. I have the smallest overflow box I could find on the back of the 20G. I then bought two of the plastic tank dividers. One I used to divide the tank into about half. The other I cut up and glued over the water slots on the overflow box, because as tiny as they are, little seahorses would get sucked right in, but the divider has small enough space to prevent that more or less. I them got some plastic decor for the seahorses to grab onto, ones with thin bits are best since they have tiny tails.

For the sump I got a HOB filter rated up to 30G, a heater, a small skimmer(not getting a lot out of it yet though still working with it and honestly I think it's overkill), a bag of carbon, and the smallest Maxijet pump for water circulation I could find. I want to say it's like the 300 model or something, it basically circulates a very small amount of water after having to pump up about 3-4 feet.

I put the baby seahorses in the side of the 20G that does not have the overflow box on it, even with that tiny flow they still get stuck to the overflow box if they get near it and their little tails can get pulled in but not their bodies, making it a pain to get them out again.I reserve the side with the overflow box for my older seahorses, I'm finding that even at a month old I still don't let them on that side, thinking 1.5-2 months might be the magic number or basically when they get ready to eat adult brine shrimp.

For feeding I keep 4 cut off soda bottles of brine shrimp and a bucket of rotifers going. Now not sure if the rotifers really do anything but I feed them in addition to the bring shrimp for the first two weeks. For the babies for the first two weeks they basically get day old or less brine shrimp. The BBS can't eat yet so I don't enrich. I only try and feed what can be eaten in a couple of hours, I usually see some food floating around but if a collection of BBS form near the surface after that I know I fed to much. My big guy get a bunch of live adult brine shrimp, I'm trying to work on getting him over to frozen without much luck so far. After the babies get a couple weeks old I start letting the BBS get a couple days old so that I can enrich. Now I do it two ways. Once a day I'll put them in a small container with Selcon for about an hour or two before feeding, I keep all the brine shrimp alive with green water though, so even when I don't use selcon they are still full of green water, which I think adds a decent bit of nutrients to them. I would like to use selcon for every meal but honestly the whole process is already to time consuming, as much as I want them to survive I have to live my life and still take care of my 90G DT, 10G freshwater, 2 cats, and dog. (Yes my house is a zoo)

I feed three times a day, the professionals feed 5 but my daily schedule just does not allow that. They also suck out the excess food and seahorse poop after every meal, again I don't have the time or capacity to make that much saltwater so I just do it once a day, normally about an hour or two after their afternoon feeding if I can. I'll suck out everything I can off the bottom and end up changing about 3-4 gallons or about 10% of the water daily. If I think the tank is maybe a bit gunkier than normal I'll do a larger water change until I am happy. But I've found with a 10% daily change the water quality stays fine.

So that is what I do. My first setup was a 10G with a divider and a HOB filter and bag of carbon in the half without seahorses, that worked well too. I only upgraded because of the massive amounts of babies I keep getting stuck with and because that tank was sitting on the dining room table, so I made a more permanent setup. I figured even if my seahorses stop having babies I can use it for a quarantine/hospital setup.