Baby seahorses. Help.

[phudeb]

I came back from church this morning and noticed baby seahorses everywhere in my tank. They are yellow kudos (I believe). I got a little 2.5 gal with an airstone set up right away and siphoned out as many as I could. Majority of them were at the surface of the water. I found a bunch more in my refugium but decided to leave those there. I figured I will have a better chance with them spread out. What do I need to do now? And what do I feed them? Mike, your ponies had babies about a year ago right? Any suggestions you can give me?

thanks,
phu

 

[greystreet41]

that's awesome. I have no idea but maybe here will help.
http://www.seahorse.org/

 

[rcmike]

Cool! I would take off the airstone and just have the tube in it. You want just enough air to circulate them. Probably a bubble coming out of the end right when the last one hits the top of the water. You want just enough air to keep them from staying at the top of the water where they can ingest air. Do you have any brine shrimp eggs? They need fed several times a day with baby brine shrimp if you can. If you have some frozen cyclopeze they might eat that. I had a few that would of mine. I was able to raise 13 of them to about 3 months old and the filter didn't come back on after the power went out and I lost all of them. In addition to seahorse.org you may try www.syngnathid.org . I know several of the people on there and they can help tremendously. They helped me a lot. If you have any questions just let me know. If you ever get too many to take care of (trust me, once they start having babies they don't know when to stop) just let me know and I'd take some off your hands just to try again.

 

[danieljames]

I have no idea if cyclopeeze is available locally, but i have some for ya if you need it asap.

 

[Fishboy42]

Congrats on the baby seahorses, phu. H. kuda is a difficult one to raise, I believe. I tried to raise someone elses babies, but they started to die off after about a week, and they were all dead by 10 days. I tried feeding live rotifers, live copepods, and newly-hatched small strain (decapsulated) brine shrimp. They seemed to be eating everything, but I don't think they got quite enough. Since these babies are pelagic as larvae as opposed to benthic, I think that makes them more difficult to raise. Perhaps they need a kreisel instead of a "standard" larval aquarium? I think erectus, reidi, and others are much easier. Michael, were yours H. kuda or another species? If kuda, maybe you could share some tips to help me out there!

-Matt

 

[rcmike]

The ones I had last year were erectus and they are easier than kuda. I did have some kuda babies several years ago and got three of them to live for several months. I wasn't prepaired for them though and just stuck most of them in my refugium and got lucky I guess. For the erectus I built a kreisel nursery out of fishbowls like shown here. http://www.syngnathid.org/ubbthread...r=13213&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1 It keeps the fry and brine shrimp from floating to the top basically. If they aren't kept from floating the fry will try to eat shrimp from the surface and will injest air bubbles and then they get stuck at the surface. I made a few of the fisbowl kreisels and would rotate them out for cleaning. You want to clean them often and do lots of water changes because the dead brine shrimp and waste will spoil pretty quickly. A few times I didn't clean it often enough and I would lose several babies when that happened.

BTW, Phu, how are they? Any still alive?

 

[gflat65]

So, where are the open ends of the fish bowls? Is the open end facing down and the closed end up with an air line inside each for circulation? Well, that would put an air capsule inside the bowls, though, wouldn't it? Just trying to understand the set up...

 

[rcmike]

Open ends up. The bowl is just basically to keep the water going in a circular motion. I adjusted mine with just enough bubbles to keep the seahorses off of the top and not tumble them too much.

 

[phudeb]

Sad to say but none of them made it by tonight. I think it was my fault for doing a water change last night. As soon as I did the WC, they were not as active. I used the water that I mixed the day before for my othe tank. Don't know. Hopefully I will get another chance. I'll be more prepared next time.
Mike, it did help once I took off the airstone.