My seahorse had babies!!

[greggnyce]

My seahorse had babies and I have no idea how to take care of them. We didnt even realize he was pregnant when we got him. He lives in our refugum and all the babies seem to have disappeared. What do they eat? How long until they are big enough to find again??

 

[Duddly01]

They don't just disappear. If you don't see them they were likely eaten or sucked into the return. What kind of horses? Southern Erectus hitch at birth, most others don't. If you find some get them into a fry rearing tank and feed the live baby brine shrimp at least 3 times a day, for now. There is alot of information on raising fry at seahorse.org.

 

[greggnyce]

Theres a lot of rubble, kenya tree and macro algea in the refugum, could they be hiding in there and will they swim around when the lights are on or off?

 

[Duddly01]

They're not nocturnal, they should swim during the day. They could be hunting pods if your refugium is established enough. You should see them hitched in the macro, they really shouldn't be that hard to find. If they're newborn Riedi, Kuda, etc. they would be swimming all of the time.

 

[ann83]

I'm sorry, but seahorses are not something where they have fry and the fry grow up along side the parents and "reappear" at a larger size - with the exception of dwarf seahorses and the rare case where someone has a very specialized setup. If you cannot see the fry, the fry are gone. They are dead. They have been sucked up in filters or eaten by corals, bristleworms, aiptasia, large amphipods, shrimp, seastars, fish, etc. This isn't to say that fry are not tiny enough to "disappear" in a well planted refugium for a while, just that unless the refugium is "fry-safe", there is very little likelihood that the fry will ever "reappear". If one does, buy a lottery ticket.

If you would like to try your hand at raising fry, do some research on the specialized fry rearing setups that seahorse fry need, and then when you're ready, buy your boy a female.