HELP! idiot with 500 babies!

L

ladyfsu

Active member
Hello! I will start reading through the threads to research this but I'm in panic mode and know these guys will probably die, but I'm going to try to save some.

Someone gave us a seahorse that was caught in their fishing net and it was EXTREMELY pregnant (about a 4-5 inch guy from the Gulf). He has been in our school tank for 2 days. I came in this morning and the top of the tanks are COVERED in baby sea horses!

I'm hatching baby brine as fast as I can but that's going to take a day. I turned off all the pumps (this is a 100 gallon setup). I added something called Roti-Rich that I had but have NO idea what the heck it is really? I plan on changing out about 3 - 5 gallons of water every 12 hours or so. I broke up chaeto hoping they can find "hitching posts" --- if I learned that phrase correctly. There are about 40 in each of 2 breeding nets on the sides of the tanks. There are another 20-30 in collection type containers on the sides. I have over 100 in a 5 gallon bucket with a slow aerator. Then I have lots still around in the tank. There are no large predators but I know anything that can catch them will!

Can anyone give me any quick advice that is a MUST to know. If I can just get 1 or more to live, it'll be worth it.

Thanks,
Laine
 
They will be fine for the first day without food while you hatch the brine. Feed them the newly hatched brine, if the brine is older than 12 hours, it will need to be enriched as they lose their nutritional value.

BTW, the species you are dealing with is most likely H. erectus, very common in Fl waters.

The fry will hitch from birth so you will need to add something for them to grab onto. Plastic craft mesh will work just fine. A 5 gallon bucket and airline will work just fine, but a 10 gallon tank would be better. Feed 2-3x a day, keep an eye on water quality and do daily water changes to keep ammonia down.

Here is a good article that deals with raising erectus fry. It is from a very successful breeder down in Fl. Actually the gentleman I reccomended to you for some CB horses.

Good luck and keep us posted.

BTW, Seahorse.Org has a whole forum dedicated to raising seahorse fry. You may want to browse there to give you some more answers and help.
 
lady, I used to use coralforum and captivereefing .com one of them has a whole forum devoted to seahorse and seahorse raising.
 
All good advice so far, and I definitely agree with Pledosophy that you are most likely dealing with H. erectus. It is not common to come across any other seahorse in the Gulf other than H. zosterae, which is far smaller.

You need more hitching posts, and you might consider plastic plants for ease of cleaning for the next few days. Also get a large source of new saltwater started so you can reliably make all the water changes as the weeks progress.

Other than that, I think you are going to need a lot of luck, so I wish you well! Raising SH is a long battle, but certainly worthwhile. Keep us posted!

>Sarah
 
500 Babies!

500 Babies!

Sounds like your class just found a new fun learning experience. We just grew some as well. I bought a hatchery and placed it in one of my reef tanks with the expecting "DAD" (don't forget it's the dad that gives birth in the seahorse world, poor guy!) they were so tiny they blew right thru the slits in the hatchery of the 100 or so I recovered about 50 which I then moved to a little 10 gal tank. We also lost a lot of them due to air in their tummies, seems they like to float to the surface and gulp air then they can't get food in unless they 'burp' the air. Just a little tip: If your seahorses decide to go to the surface and fill their tummies with air, which is common. Use a small net and "trap" them and sink them to the bottom of the tank over night. This helps with the pressure to release air. I think next time I'll net over the water surface the first few weeks to avoid that.. I read some notes about adding perching posts, normally they don't perch for 1-2 weeks and don't discard the once laying on the bottom-- I threw out a bunch thinking they were dead only to learn later they do that while young so look closely and wisp them before removing them. Baby newly hatched brine is great for them, if your LFS sells encapsulated eggs it's better because the shell is where the nitrate is and they are very sensitive to water conditions from what I found. It's cool to watch then grow-up!

I have a brine shrimp Hatcher you can use, it's goes in the tank and swirls the eggs keeping the hatched shells in the device then releasing the brine thought the day for them-- If you want to use that let me know and I'll bring it out to my bldg. in Tarpon Springs where you can pick it up if you want.

Good luck with them!!!

Darin
 
Last edited:
Re: 500 Babies!

Re: 500 Babies!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9672178#post9672178 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SoundsFishy2me2
and gulp air then they can't get food in unless they 'burp' the air.

Click to expand...

OMGOSH!!!! Burping the babies? AHHAHAHA that is so funny (well sad, but funny). I had to do that with my own 3 children not too long ago. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd have to worry about seahorses gulping too much air!

OK well most of them are at the top. :( I just tried forcing some down in the net like you said. I have 1/2 here at home who just had their first meal. I'll me going to school this morning and afternoon, and try to feed the rest and get some tanks set up.

What I think I'll do is find 3-4 articles on what to do, AND let the students research this. Let different groups of students raise the seahorses the way they want (with my guidance), and see which ways work best. Hopefully with a variety of ways, we'll have maybe a little success.

The ones in school are in breeder nets at the moment, attached to the sides of the tanks.

Thanks for the offer of brine hatcheries. We have several unused ones in a box at school. I'll get some started and let the students do the rest. We have 5 weeks of school left (seniors are not mentally there anymore). I'll bribe them into coming in before and after school, as well as during class, to clean tanks and feed their new babies.

Man, I sure hope we don't kill them all. I know it's all a learning process, and I'll be sure to let the students know the success rate is going to be at a minimum. I'd just like to send them off for the summer feeling good about it all!!

Thanks.
 
It is now a common thought that the floating has nothing to do with them gulping air. Fry that have been exposed to air are no more prone to it than ones kept submerged.

It is now believd that the reason for floating is a bacteria affecting the swim bladder. Some from will perish from it, but others have recovered and been raised to adulthood.

As for the burping part, a standard aquarium is not deep enough to facilitate a successful decompression. In order to do that, you will need a vessel at least 3 meters in depth. Also the main problem with decompression is the rate of accent. You may be able to get the bubble out by holding them down with a net, but you will not be able to bring them back up into the water slow enough to keep the bubbles out. They can stilll reform during the accent and you are right back to square one.
 
woow..congrats mommy lol we wnat pics eventually whe your done burping the babies!! hehee gl
 
Good luck with the seahorse babies. What a great learning experience for your students!

Seperating them in to different tanks is a great idea. I few hints I've learned from raising my seahorse. If they develop enlarged air bladders and are floating on thier sides on the surface their chance of survival is very, very small. It's better to cull these now as 1) they may be diseased and may be able to spread that to the other fry, 2) lots of dead and dying seahorses fouls the water, 3) it's better to concentrate on the stronger fry that have a better chance of living. If you can't bring yourself to kill these floaters I would at least keep them issolated in a seperate tank and move any fry with floating issues to that tank.

I've had better luck feeding enriched brine. I enrich with phytoplankton, selco, nurtaRose, and beta glucan. What works well for me is to hatch out a large batch of brine once or twice a week. The brine are kept in a growout bucket and feed phytoplankton (kept in greenwater). Each morning pull out a scoop of brine and enrich with a few drops of selco, nurtaRose, and beta glucan. That batch gets fed in the afternoon and a new batch is set up with enrichments for the next morning's feed.
 
OK here are pics from yesterday and Sunday. I don't have todays pics yet, but I will tomorrow. We estimated that we have about 400+ babies. 4 10-gallon tanks were set up today, and we're having trouble finding things for "hitching." Only about a dozen have died so far and they were the ones caught in a breeder net that wasn't noticed :( . I imagine the first 72 hours a lot live ... I'm preparing everyone for what I think is going to happen !! :( We're working hard!

Here is the 1 of 5 buckets.

600_baby_in_bucket.JPG


Here is papa when he was going in our tank (and he had his babies less than a day later :eek1: ).

600_daddy_horse.JPG


We have lots of BBS going. I'll try to post pics tomorrow.

Students will be updating this page.

http://www.reefrascals.org/classtanks/seahorses.html
 
Like that? No way. That's just mean now.

It may have been better to have left the father in the water, but once he was removed and brought to me by a misguided (but well meaning) person, I had no choice. You don't let something go unless it's where you got it from and there was no way to do that. These guys were born in captivity. If I just "let them go" as babies, they'll get eaten or placed in a more dangerous area. You also are not supposed to ethically put anything into the wild that wasn't BORN in the wild (unless it is for trying to re-establish a species).
 
I don't think they would have lost any ability to survive from 4 days in captivity. The person who brought them to you should be able to point you in the right direction on where to let them go. Most of them getting eaten is natural.
 
I would lose my 'educator's collector's license' by letting them go. I took a 2 day course on this. I can not hop in a boat 45 miles from where I live to go jump in the water and hope to find the exact place he found it, not to mention that I am not allowed to drop the babies back, just the daddy.

Seriously, I'm sorry if you see it that way. If you have a productive way to help with raising them in the class, please let me know. That's what I was posting for.
 
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