Seahorses

[leliataylor]

I am new to MAAST am interested in meeting other people that are raising seahorses. I started raising seahorses 3 years ago and it has now become my obsession. My 55 G reef tank was turned into a seahorse tank and since then I have added 9 more tanks. Some of my young from last year are now parents. I have juveniles from this year that range from 1 day old to 4 months old. Currently I am raising H.Erectus and plan to set up a Kuda tank this fall. My pair with cirri are mating, again, as I type. The adults and older juveniles eat PE Mysid Shrimp. The smallest ones are feed a combination of live copepods, frozen copepods and newly hatched BBS.

Does anyone have any young H. Kuda? Thank you! I hope to make the meeting Sunday.

[Jeff]

where are you from? i have 1 old male left and i couldn't tell what kind he is but if your interested in selling some of your captive breed horses that would be cool.

[RayAllen]

WelCome! Ive never kept SeaHorses but it has intrigued me. Are you in San Antonio or the Austin Area?

[Richard]

I am setting up to raise H. comes. I have two juvenile males CB from ORA.

Friday I am getting two more from ORA plus 10 that are TR out of vietnam.

Kuda, from what I have read are tougher to raise than erectus.

[leliataylor]

I am in San Antonio. I will be interested in placing some of the young once they are eating full size PE Mysid shrimp and at least 3.5 to 4 inches long. Currently I am still cutting up the shrimp into smaller pieces. The parents are all either ones I raised or ones I purchased from Jorge Gomezjurado (he designed the seahorse exhibit for the Baltimore National Aquarium).

Seahorses are easy to keep as adults but difficult to raise as juveniles. They will thrive is a reef tank with other docile fish (gobies, pipefish, etc.). They like micro and macro algae such as Caulerpa. They love to hide in live rock and will play in the currents from power heads, as long as they have quiet areas with hold fasts. They can not be kept with inverts that have stinging cells or that are aggressive with their pincers (i.e. many crabs and shrimp). The most amazing aspect of seahorses are their courtship displays. The change color (pink, orange, red, silver, etc.) as they circle together, prior to the transfer of the eggs into the males pouch. They will continue their courtship displays throughout the 14 day gestation. Hooked on seahorses.

[leliataylor]

Richard good luck with your H. Comes. Your are right H. kuda do not pair up as readily as H. Erectus. Although the literature reports a 14 day pelagic phase, the experts I have spoken with have advised me it can be longer, making the fry much harder to keep alive. I am experimenting with with modified kriesel tanks for the young and hang on fuges for copepod production. I am open to any ideas.

[loans_n_fishes]

I, too, may be interested in one of your female seahorses when the time comes to sell. I am holding out for one with cirri. ;) What do you plan to ask for them? I'm not sure how much to charge for mine when the time comes. I would think the mixed breed would be desireable, but I am not sure. It seems prices have become steeper lately on the websites. I checked out Ocean Rider, Draco Marine, and Seahorse Source. All prices have gone up--some quite significantly.

I aquired my first seahorse in November and added the last 2 in March or April. Right now, I have 2 male erectus, 1 female barb, 1 female reidi. I believe BOTH males are pregnant! :wacko One with barb..the other with the reidi. I really didn't plan on cross breeding, but it will be interesting to see the results. You may have seen my thread about my first attempt at raising young. I did not fare well, but hopefully will do better the next time around. Could you tell me step by step what you are doing to raise them?

Check out seahorse.org. There is lots of good information and great people too. (I am "barbaloot" on there.)

Where are you located?

[Richard]

Richard good luck with your H. Comes. Your are right H. kuda do not pair up as readily as H. Erectus. Although the literature reports a 14 day pelagic phase, the experts I have spoken with have advised me it can be longer, making the fry much harder to keep alive. I am experimenting with with modified kriesel tanks for the young and hang on fuges for copepod production. I am open to any ideas.


I believe that large amounts of copepods, particularly pelgic copepods, would greatly increase survival. Better nutrition and faster growth rates so they will get to a benthic stage much faster. So what I am doing for the H. comes is using fairly large (58 gallon) tanks for my fry rearing tanks. These will essentially be large copepod cultures. I'll have to play around with airflow to keep the fry off the surface but I think I can work it out. I have a very small pelagic copepod that showed up in one of my reef tanks fuges and is very prolific in there. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what is they require to reach high densities in a culture but if I can then I think I'll have an excellent fry food to get them quickly through the pelagic phase.

I have read that the only successful rearing of H. fisheri has been in very tall (5') tanks where they could more easily be kept in the water column and off the surface. They are an open water pelagic horse their whole lives which makes them extra difficult. So I'm kind of using that idea, scaled down of course (no room for a 5' tall tank lol).

It will be a year before my H. comes are ready to produce fry so I have lots of time to work out the kinks.

[leliataylor]

If you ever get over run with copepods I would be happy to take some off your hands. I also have a 45 G that is currently seahorse free, so I am using it to raise copepods. I am not sure how much longer it will be before it is also full of seahorses. I use a 125 micron plankton sieve to collect them. Seeding the nursery tanks with copepods works well, however seahorse fry are voracious and can rapidly deplete your pods. My first nursery tanks were 10 G, I have since started using 20 Gal high tanks set up like mini reef tanks. Keeping the fry of the surface in a 58 G will be difficult. A powerhead behind a tank divider might create enough surface agitation to keep them lower in the tank. I use the outflow from the canister filter combined with bubbler to create surface agitation and a tank divider to keep them out of the intake. For me it has been trial and error, finding what works best for me. I doubt I will be able to stop the continuous hatching of bbs anytime in the near future. I breath a sigh of relief each time they out grow their pelagic phase and again when they start eating frozen mysid shrimp. Best of luck with your Tiger Tails.

[Richard]

Once I figure out these little pelagic pods I can give you some if you want to culture them.

Right now the only thing that they are doing ok on is phycopure but that will get too expensive for a large culture. In the fuge that they came out of the water was cloudy with so many of them. No phyto was ever dosed to that system so I'm not sure what it was that they like so much.

[leliataylor]

There is always room for more pods when raising seahorses. My 45 G is exploding with pelagic pods. You might want to try a green water culture for raising the pods. My 45 g and the fuge yours came out of are loaded with micro algae. I do add spirulina to the pod tank. Phyco is great but expensive. Dan Underwood from Seahorse Source has a number of different types of micro algae. I would wait until the end of seahorse breeding season to call him. He is up to his eyeballs raising seahorses right now.