Baby sea horse erectus tank conditions -- ok? and other ?

[CTaylor]

Hi,
My errectus had babies last friday. So, now Tuesday, they are 4 days old. I'm guessing I have about a 90% survival rate. About 150-200 were born. I have them in a 20 gallon long tank with low power LED light strip. I have good capacity sponge filter and light/medium bubbles coming up from it. I have then eating baby brine, whch I feed to them about 3x a day. I have read to do 5x, but there are always a good # of live bbs swimming around.

Temperature is about 76 degrees. I also have a piece of Life Rock to help bolser some bio filtration. I tested both ammonia and nitrite. Amm = near undetecable and nitrite about 0.1 ppm. Which I think is amazing. Tested on salifert. Double test to make sure. I was going to do 50% water changes twice a week. But hey, why? since my levels seem great (?)

I just started a new batch of BBS. To the first one, since 24 hrs after hatching I have added a cap or two of concentrated phytoplankton. I read how to add selco which I will today also.

THis is my second time trying to raise baby seahorses. First time was total flop, but I was not prepared. How am I looking so far with my current route?

And do I just start letting the brine shrimp grow a little bit as the horses grow, and then after a month try to ween them to frozen small mysis?
I tried to do some research, but it's not too easy with work (long hours) and etc.

Thanks!

 

[vlangel]

Hi,
My errectus had babies last friday. So, now Tuesday, they are 4 days old. I'm guessing I have about a 90% survival rate. About 150-200 were born. I have them in a 20 gallon long tank with low power LED light strip. I have good capacity sponge filter and light/medium bubbles coming up from it. I have then eating baby brine, whch I feed to them about 3x a day. I have read to do 5x, but there are always a good # of live bbs swimming around.

Temperature is about 76 degrees. I also have a piece of Life Rock to help bolser some bio filtration. I tested both ammonia and nitrite. Amm = near undetecable and nitrite about 0.1 ppm. Which I think is amazing. Tested on salifert. Double test to make sure. I was going to do 50% water changes twice a week. But hey, why? since my levels seem great (?)

I just started a new batch of BBS. To the first one, since 24 hrs after hatching I have added a cap or two of concentrated phytoplankton. I read how to add selco which I will today also.

THis is my second time trying to raise baby seahorses. First time was total flop, but I was not prepared. How am I looking so far with my current route?

And do I just start letting the brine shrimp grow a little bit as the horses grow, and then after a month try to ween them to frozen small mysis?
I tried to do some research, but it's not too easy with work (long hours) and etc.

Thanks!

I personally would not use Selco. When I raised erectus fry they started dying for no apparent reason and Tami Weiss told me that maybe they got bacteria in their gut. When I stopped using Selco and switched to Dan's Feed as an enrichment I did not lose anymore.

I never tried to grow out the bbs. As the fry grew I just began adding adult brine shrimp. Then I began adding shaved mysis pieces into the enriched adult brine shrimp.

 

[CTaylor]

Hi VL,
THANKS for that!
I'll order the Dan's feed now.
**I currently have some enrichment that I add to my regular SH food from Seahorse source: SPriulina and NatuRose. Are those any good for enrich bbs?
What about the phytoplankton? I read to add that to the bbs hatchery about 24 hrs after hatching so they can actually ingest it (???)
**To sterilize the bbs before feeding, I take out about 2mL of bbs from bottom of hatchery, then add 1 ml peroxide, mix a few seconds. Then I pour that on a fine mesh net (actually lined with panty hose haha)... I rinse that with nursery water. Then feed. I do that b/c I heard to sterilize with H2O2, but the method I saw was more time consuming, and seemed to me would kill the bbs over time. This is quick and low exposure to the h2o2.

 

[vlangel]

Hi VL,
THANKS for that!
I'll order the Dan's feed now.
**I currently have some enrichment that I add to my regular SH food from Seahorse source: SPriulina and NatuRose. Are those any good for enrich bbs?
What about the phytoplankton? I read to add that to the bbs hatchery about 24 hrs after hatching so they can actually ingest it (???)
**To sterilize the bbs before feeding, I take out about 2mL of bbs from bottom of hatchery, then add 1 ml peroxide, mix a few seconds. Then I pour that on a fine mesh net (actually lined with panty hose haha)... I rinse that with nursery water. Then feed. I do that b/c I heard to sterilize with H2O2, but the method I saw was more time consuming, and seemed to me would kill the bbs over time. This is quick and low exposure to the h2o2.

I am guessing that phytoplankton is good and also what you are doing with the peroxide. To be honest I did not do either of those steps but I managed to raise 15 out of 22 fry to 4-6 months. All I did was rinse the bbs after enriching and getting ready to feed the fry. I did however do water changes and cleaning on the bbs every single day to keep bacteria down. I changed and bleached the bbs containers that I enriched them in every 3 days.

All of that plus cleaning, feeding the seahorse fry was so demanding for such a long time that I only raised fry once. Perhaps I had some beginners luck too!

 

[rayjay]

IMO Phytoplankton is OK to use as a food for growing the artemia, but for an enrichment, you would need multiple species to provide the proper enrichment. It's not an easy task for me and some others to grow species other than nannochloropsis so I purchase the powdered ones of which Dan's is the best.
Spirulina is an excellent food source that I use as the grow food for my artemia right to adult stage and it is also the main ingredient in "Dan's Food" along with Schizochytrium that is the best DHA enrichment I've ever seen, plus many other things as well. Like when using Dan's Food for enrichment, the spirulina should be micronized by blending in a blender for a minimum of two minutes before using. I pour through a rotifer screen into two litre bottles that I store in the fridge.
With regards to the hydrogen peroxide treatment, I can't find where Dan posted his proceedure but as I've copied it down I can put it here:

From Dan Underwood of seahorsesource.com: I use 35% Hydrogen Peroxide. Local chemical supply company has it for $8.00 gallon. I believe it is industrial grade. 35% has 390,100 mg/L or 390.1 mg/ml. I round that off to 400 mg/ml for most of my calculations. So I add 20 ml to 1 liter (20ml X 400mg = 8,000 mg).
3 % Hydrogen Peroxide = 33.9 mg/ml according to my calculation. I have seen many figure it at 30 mg/ml. To use this I would add 250 ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide to 750 ml water.
When i do this, I add the artemia to a hatching cone with strong aeration for mixing and then add the peroxide. After 45 seconds to 1 minute, I pull the airline. The live artemia will migrate to the bottom of the cone. Unhatched cysts, dead artemia and debris will collect on the surface in the foam. At the end of 5 minutes, I open the valve on the bottom of the cone and drain the live artemia into a net with freshwater running. I stop about 1 inch from the foam layer.