Baby Dwarf Seahorses

[tvoydan]

Woke up this morning and realized one of my dwarf's had babies. At first, I only saw one, but when I got home from work, I can see no less than 6. They sure are small.

Pics are of one on the end of the sponge filter. And another attached to the head of an adult.

I'll have to work at getting better pics from this lousy camera I have.

So I've read they won't need to eat for 2 days? And then newly hatched brine shrimp should be fine? Can anyone tell if they'll eat rotifers too?

 

[tvoydan]

Wow! I'm easily over 15 baby dwarf's after careful searching the tank.

 

[mtc1966]

i cant answer but got to say how cool is that 2cnd pic.

 

[Kitsune_Gem]

The male will give birth to an average of 10-30 fry, which are independent from birth and will eat baby brine shrimp. The babies are well-developed and use their prehensile tails almost immediately, growing very fast when provided with plenty of newly-hatched brine shrimp each day, and will double in size in just 17 days, and after 3 months, will be ready to mate.

(From liveaquaria)

 

[tvoydan]

This from fusedjaw.

The babies don't eat for the first day or two since they have some yolk left. After that we had to hatch a lot of artemia every day and night.

Right now, they don't seem to be to interested in baby brine shrimp passing by. We'll see what happens tomorrow. Wish I had a better camera, they presented some nice photo ops all night.

 

[timinnl]

I just feed them the same enriched artemia I feed the adults along with copepods. They do just fine on the same diet.

Tim

 

[tvoydan]

Do you separate the babies or raise them in the same tank?

Are you wating a day or two before you enriched the bbs? Doesn't it take that long before the baby brine shrimp develop mouths?

 

[rayjay]

Same tank.
They change to Instar II within a day, some a lot sooner, so enrichment can begin one day after hatchout.

 

[tvoydan]

rayjay - Do you have any suggestions on how much brine to hatch? Right now I was hatching 5 two litre bottles of brine on the weekend with a teaspoon of decapped eggs in each, and that seemed to be more than enough for 25 adults for a week. Now with babies, it seems like I may need more as I'm now feeding 3-4 times a day rather than 2-3. And I'm increasing the feeding density.

 

[rayjay]

The only way to know is if they are clearing the tank of the live brine shortly after you put them in the tank then you have to do more. If they are still in the tank when next feeding time comes, they need to be removed before new live food is added and you decrease the amount you put in.
If you are getting good hatch out of the two teaspoons I can't see why that wouldn't be enough for all.
I only increase density of feedings when they clear the tank of all the live within a half hour.