New H. comes Arrived Today

[leliataylor]

I have been wanting to get a couple more pairs of CB H. comes (tigertail) seahorses for a while now. I spoke with DanU at SeahorseSource some time ago and he advised me he should have some available in Oct. or Nov. On Sunday he emailed me that he had a few available and I ordered 2 pairs on Monday. They arrived today and are gorgeous big youngsters. They even ate in less than 3 hours in my tank.

Here are a couple of lousy pics I took with a infrared flash since they are still in a darkened room. I will get some better photos once they are fully acclimated to their new surroundings.

[FarmerTy]

Too cool!

[leliataylor]

Thanks Ty.

I shot some pictures of them this morning and wanted to share them. The first is one of the females hitching, the second is a different female in prey capture mode, third is one of the females changing color and the fourth is a male changing color. 24 hours in my tank and they are already courting.

[FarmerTy]

That's amazing! May I say that of all the many interesting niche tanks that I've seen out there in reefing, that your seahorse setup and mysis breeding tanks are some of the most interesting I've come across. I'm sure your excellent documentation has something to do with it too as well as your willingness to provide little insights as well during the process.

Either way, keep doing what you're doing, I find it very refreshing to be able to follow your progress with the mysis growout and seahorse tanks and see something other than your standard reef tanks.

[leliataylor]

You made me smile. I started keeping seahorses a few years before I joined MAAST and there is nothing that I did back then that I do now. I actually have three different types of tanks, the adults are housed in larger tanks with LS and LR, the growout tanks are larger bare bottom tanks and the nurseries are round sterile tubs. They are each designed to fulfill the needs of seahorses or mysis as they mature. My systems are patterned after what commercial breeders use on a hobbyist scale. Even my K1 media reactors are a small version of what commercial breeders use to enhance aerobic bacterial proliferation.

I call seahorses the "special needs" fish of the saltwater world. They can live 12 years or more and will become much larger than their reported size. Unfortunately the average life expectancy of seahorses in captivity is less than 3 years. Many people don't even realize male seahorses are capable of killing each other during competition for a mate which is one of the reasons some of us only keep a single pair in each tank. The two pairs that are currently in QT will be split up shortly to prevent the conspecific aggression that is inevitable (male wars).

Just like many people on MAAST love teaching me about corals I love to teach people about seahorses.