Pic.s of my new baby erectus

C

craigshup

New member
Hey RayJay, I have a few pics. of my horses, they are shy so I will try to get some better in a few days, The baby's are from the horses I bought from Richard (Tampa Bay Saltwater) yesterday with some live coral rock.
The last 2 pics. are of the horses I have had for a yr.
I can only upload 5 pics. on here so if you want to see the other pics.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2080290
This is the link where they are posted, I will try to get better pics. in a couple days and post.
There is over 400 babys in that tank from last night till this morning.
Maybe I will luck out and raise a few.
 

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Congratulations!!
What method of rearing are you using to raise the fry?
Are you using enrichment for the bbs?
I actually like to remove all the fry as soon as they are released from the male, and not leave them in the tank.
 
Thanks for the reply,
(probably the crash and burn method)
Yes I removed the baby's as soon as they were born, the males that had them are in the pic. of the 4 dark horses, the baby's came from 2 males.

The pic. of the 10 gal. with the baby's don't have any adults in there, that is what I am using to keep them in for a few days, to see if they live or die!

I just put all the green stuff in there for them to hitch to, cause there are so many.
It seemed to work, most are hitching from top to bottom.

I don't know how much bbs they should be eating a day, I put about 1/2 tsp of fresh hatched bbs in as soon as they were ready yesterday and they were gone last night.
So I put about half that amount again about 1 am and they are gone this morning.
I am running my light 24/7

I have watched them and most are eating or hunting for food.

I used bleach on the eggs.

I am putting green water in with them for the Rotifers, BBS, and pods to eat.

When it clears up I add more.

I read that BBS can't eat for the first day or two, because there mouth and anus hasn't developed when first hatched, is why I am putting them in as soon as the BBS hatch while they still have there yoke sac. (is that true or not)

At how may days old are baby erectus before they can eat new hatched Mysids?

Any advice on the baby's?

I know I don't know what I am doing here but I am trying:)

It was either try to raise them or feed them to my 90 gal. as food!

I will try this first.
 
Congrats on the babies.... a couple of suggestions.. think sterile when raising babies....

You might want to remove those plants that you have in the tank. They are just a spot for bacteria to grow..... zip ties or gutter guard (home depot) works really well...

Also, you don't want to keep brine in the tank constantly... the horses have very small digestive systems and if they keep eating, they will eventually poop out live brine which means they aren't getting any nutrition. I feed my babies 2 to 3 times a day with brine...

good luck and don't get discouraged.. it's hard work raising babies!
 
Well, here is an update, about 200 have died in total.

It seems like the ones that stays at the top of the water don't eat, and they hold each other in clumps of fry till they die.I even put 4 air lines but they still stay clumped together!

The ones in the 10 gal. are still growing and doing good, I now have 3 air line running in this tank to create enough current to keep all below the top.( around 200 )

Built a tube shaped fiber screen cage with lids on each end to experiment with the floaters to keep them in the middle( I feel like I have nothing to lose any way)
with them.( after it dries completely there is about 45 floating in the hex 5 gal. tank that I will put in it till they do better or die.) will let ya'll know if it works with any or not, some are already to far gone I think but we will see.

One of my horses I bought last yr. just had another 62 fry.
So they are in a different setup, (wide mouth 2gal. pickle jar) with one air line in the middle, with it's shape, it seems to keep all fry forced at least 2 inches below the surface of the water, using small strip of plastic screen for them to hitch to.
We will see if this works better or not!

I will post another update about Sunday (with pics. if any are still alive by then)

My new live rock and coral from TBS is still doing great, I added about 15 beach shrimp to it so maybe they will have some baby's so I can feed them to the baby seahorses if I have ant at that time.

I noticed that the mysid that is raising in my main tank and sumps are a different type then the ones I bought from a dealer the other day, I caught 50 out of 2 sumps, and placed them in a plastic container over a week ago and they are all still alive and many with full pouches.(They have a red tint to their bodys and they crawl every where they go) I am keeping these separate from the other kind, and am trying to raise these in larger numbers then in my tanks and sumps. If these raise better then i will set more cultures of these.

The ones I bought,( white and swims in the currents and hardly ever crawls) a week ago are all dead now, with the same kind of setup as the other 50 out of my tanks!

I got in another 500 yesterday, fed a few to my adult horses, and turned the rest lose in a 29 gal sump with live rock and live sand. Will see if any are still alive in a week that way.

So that is what is going on here for now!
 
When I was able to raise my 2 successful batches (before I kinda gave up due to cross-contamination and all horses including adults but 1 baby died) I used a couple one gallon ball jars for when they were real small. It seemed to get a good kressel effect and help keep em off the top. It also keeps the food density high so they dont have to hunt..its always floating by. I tried a 15gal with sump at first...WAY too big...then a 5, then the jars after using a fishbowl. Jars seemed to work best for me, kinda similar I guess to what rayjay uses. maybe those screens your talking about might work even better in a jar.
I used fake plants for hitches also, but cut pretty much all the leaves off so they could hitch to the stems easier since I felt their tails were kinda small to get around the leaves.
Just a couple ideas....
 
craigshup said:
I noticed that the mysid that is raising in my main tank and sumps are a different type then the ones I bought from a dealer the other day, I caught 50 out of 2 sumps, and placed them in a plastic container over a week ago and they are all still alive and many with full pouches.(They have a red tint to their bodys and they crawl every where they go) I am keeping these separate from the other kind, and am trying to raise these in larger numbers then in my tanks and sumps. If these raise better then i will set more cultures of these.
Click to expand...
I've not found any mysid shrimp that only crawl around as they normally have a mix of contact on rock/plant but love to cavort down low between the rock work. There are many many different mysids however.

The ones I bought,( white and swims in the currents and hardly ever crawls) a week ago are all dead now, with the same kind of setup as the other 50 out of my tanks!

I got in another 500 yesterday, fed a few to my adult horses, and turned the rest lose in a 29 gal sump with live rock and live sand. Will see if any are still alive in a week that way.
Click to expand...
While you may have some alive, a 29g sump will not maintain that number of mysids even if it is set up with tons of rubble for them to excape predation by each other.
There is NO easy way to culture mysids on any meaningful scale due to their cannibalistic nature. Best yields come from separation of sizes but even then, a few same size mysids can gang up on a similar sized one and it will be toast.
 
Thanks for info ssantac and rayjay!

I am sorry I haven't posted more pics. yet.
I am working dif. and longer hrs. now, but I will get some soon.
The update is:
The 62 new batch from the morning of 10/14/11 are all still alive so far, the jar has really worked better then anything else I have tried, they never make it to the top so I have had no floaters in this batch yet! The only thing I worry about is if the current is too strong, and may injure them but it hasn't yet. If I turn the air down any they find a place to come to the top, so it is a pretty heave bubbling in their.

On the batch of over 400 born 10/08/11 update:
The net I built didn't do any good, all the floaters just went to the top of the net and stayed like they were still floating.
I counted them as I moved them and there are still about 210 alive.
I moved them all to big jars, and now I have no floaters with this batch either.
I have not lost any more in the last few days, There are a few smaller ones 10-20 that don't look so good but the rest seems good at this point. I finely got my dans enrichment feed for the bbs in today.So I made up some and have 1/2 day old bbs in it and will feed to my fry tomorrow.
The main problem I see at this point is 3-4 will hang their tails around each other and won't let go, even with squirting them with water from a turkey baster.( so i don't know how this will affect them.
For hitches I made plastic wire tie chains for the jars, and each jar has one air line in it, and no floaters.
Where with the 10 gal. tank, I couldn't keep them from floating even with four air lines through out the tank. Tried dif. positions, depths, but nothing kept them all off the top.
So for now I will use the big 2 gal. jars.
I am open for better ideas but this is working for now.
If i come up with something dif. to try I will try on the next batch.( this batch has been through a lot already so I will keep this going with them till I run into another problem.
I am still letting them feed 24/7 because of my work schedule, I either have to feed them ever 16 hrs. or leave it with them all the time, so they get it 24/7 for now!

My wild caught adults from TBS (tampa bay saltwater ) are eating frozen mysis now and are all doing good so far, and are kept on the other end of the house from my captive born ones, and I don't use any of the same stuff ( bowls, turkey baster, jars, air lines Nothing) just in case some one wanted to know or had a concern about that.
I will try to get more pics. of them posted soon.
 
Ok I finely got a few more pics. of the babys and 2 more of the adults, in total 25 pics. of my rock and critters. Will give more updates on the babys in about a week if they are still alive!
If any body would like to share pics. of your horses you can post them on here if you want to, every body likes to see pics. if they didn't they wouldn't be on here any way!
 
Well, I did my 2 day water change late last night. After I cut the air off I noticed that all the floaters still floated, has lost more body size, and some were dead.
I removed any that was not trying to move on their own dead or alive.
Most would still move their tails if you touched them, but I removed them any way.
I placed the ones that tried to eat at least once after watching for over 4 straight hours in another jar with gut loaded bbs with light air flow.
The others that had gave up and some dead got flushed!
I removed 6 from the 62 batch.
And 85 from the 400+ batch!
15 were placed in the new jar and 3 are eating well today the other 12 are floating and will be checked tomorrow to see if they are eating still or if they need flushed.
So that put me down to 54 from the 2nd batch of 62.
And 100 + from the 400+.
I hate it, I am trying my best but I think this is going to be another failure on my part!
I am still going to do my best with the rest down till the last one!
I am considering removing my females and placing them in another 29 gal. tank to prevent so many babies until I figure out what works for me.
I will keep posting updates of this till the end.
It will be worth it if it helps even person keep from making some of my same mistakes!
I am not giving up, I just think I need to try a smaller amount till I get it right.
I still welcome any responses!
Thanks to every one that has offered info, I am sure I will need much more :)
 
Sounds like your doing pretty good to me. Glad the jars are working a little better for you. If this is one of your first times, and you get any to survive your doing good in my opinion. How often do you do water changes? I do them every day, somewhere around 50%-ish. With the food and babies thats a lot of organisms to crap up the water. I have some rigid air line with hose attached that I use to vacume the jars, and if any babies get sucked up they obviously get put back in the jar (unless dead/dying) via baster.

May also want to try and pay attention to how long the BBS is in with them. They lose nutritional value the older they get, so some of the horses may be eating old BBS like crazy and still starving.

I was kinda following a mix of rayjay and David Mulcahy from seahorse.org. I cant remember the timeframes, but I think there are guidelines to dividing up the broods at certain ages/growth periods. Maybe its close to time to divide them up?

Watching the babies, I'm kinda under the impression that there are high death rates naturally. Some of them just dont seem to eat. Food floats by, bounces off their face, tries to swim in their snout, and they do nothing. Then there are the others that go around and choke each other out.

IDK where your at, but maybe there is someone local to you on here that might be willing to take some of the babies your horses are having while you concentrate on what you have now. Thats what I was doing...just giving them away.

PS...where are those new pics you mentioned???
 
Thanks for the kind words ssantac!
I have had several batches of fry before, but was always out of town when they were born, I would come home and not know if the were one day or a week old, my wife feed the adults and coral tank while i am away but she never sees the new fry unless I point them out to her.

This is my first real attempt from day of birth!

This is the longest I have had any alive.
They are normally dead in a day or two!
I HAD A COUPLE make it till day five or so on the batch before this!

So this time I have more doubled this time.
I pulled about 25 more out last night, not dead just are not eating, they move their tail if you touch them. When they are like this they have been dying within 2 days, so I started pulling them so they don't pa lute the water for the healthy ones.

I am adding 3-5 day old enriched bs 2 times per day, and doing 100% WC every other day, putting the leftover bs and water in a 30 gal. container. Placing the fry in clean jars teaming with hundreds of enriched bs, then cleaning those jars and having them ready for the next round!

WOW, I tell ya, I have raised all kind of exotic animals from the time I was a kid.
Watching so many of the baby seahorses just wither away is depressing, I think I am spending too much time worrying about the floaters and not enough time on the healthy ones.
It may be cruel but I have decided to pull any floaters/sinkers out put them in a dif. container with daily enriched bs. And if any make it fine and if they don't fine ( and I am gonna start calling them fry, it seems like a less personal name for them, and if any make their my babies:) )

I forgot to add the link of the pics. I am sorry, here they are!
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2080290

PS I finely got a pic. of my bright yellow cucumber and of the other W/C male SH's I will post them this afternoon and some of the fry took today if I don't get called to work, again thanks for any info, please keep it coming.
 
I'm kinda under the impression that there are high death rates naturally
Click to expand...
I am gonna argue to the contrary. I have long held the belief that in the wild, the majority of the losses are from predation. In the aquarium environment, it is a combination of environmental, disease and nutrition that does them in. Getting a 90 to 95 percent survival in captivity is doable but takes a tremendous amount of time, work and space. No steps can be skipped.

From an environmental aspect, most folks don't keep the water quality up enough and stable enough, and a way too high of a stocking density with the fry.

Most of the disease issues that occur in fry from a lack of bacterial management in live feeds and stress from the environmental and nutritional issues.

Nutrition is all over the place within the hobby. If using artemia, a good quality enrichment and proper enriching techniques are key.

FWIW, kreisel tanks or effect are not needed with seahorses, especially benthic fry such as H. erectus. Healthy fry do fine without a kreisel.

Dan
 
Thanks Dan for all the info, sorry I kept you on the phone so long!

I went to Home Depot and bought me a micro cleaner set for about 13 bucks, and a 10 ft clear 3/8 hose to put on the end of it, and wow it cleans good and fast with the little the little 1 1/2 wide brush!(The best money on equipment I have spent yet!)

For a middle of the week update on the fry!

I have gave them 2 of the 3 treatments of Quick Cure for parasites, most of the floating has stopped for now, their 3rd dose will be tomorrow.

I took them out of the jars after the last die off from shock of a 100% water change and put them in a 10 gal. tank so I only change 20 % each day as I clean the bottom up and put 24-36 hr. BBS in 2 times per day, and take the BBS out the next morning.To take out the uneaten BBS I use a divider and place a filter from Wal-Mart in it without the filter.I turn it on and place a bowl with a 53 micron screen under the out flow of water to catch almost all the BBS.
I place the BBS in either a 16 gal. tub with Mysids in it or another 16 gal. with green water in it and am raising those to larger sizes and test with a few hundred each day to see when they are ready for larger food.I rotate each day which tub I place the left over BBS in and now I have enough bbs in with the mysids I have seen a few baby mysids now! I also placed my fake leafy plants in the mysid tub for the baby's to be able to hide from the adults better!

Out of the first batch of over 400, I only have a hand full still alive, 3 has started growing a lot in the last few days. and 3 of the floaters has started eating a little, they are 3 1/2 weeks old now!

On the second batch of 62, I still have 20 @ about 12 days, two don't look so good, they are still not eating well yet (floaters). The other 18 stay in the lower part of the tank swimming and eating all day, and some at night (they can still see from the light used for the green water) most of these are as big and some bigger then the first batch.

I am trying not to get my hopes up yet on any of them, It's hard not to tho because now some are starting to show their personalities and more grown up looking features like the little cone shaped thing on their heads, bigger and longer bodies, better colors, better hunting skills, favorite hitching places, they really are so cool even at this age:)

I have went from spending most of ever day checking on them/watching them, to a couple hrs. a day watching them plus about 30 min. for cleanup and feeding.

I will post new pic.s this weekend on their 4 week birthday or of what is left by then!
I will use my wife's camera to take the next pic.s of the close up.
 
Curious: What sort of micro cleaner kit did you get? Looking for something myself right now to clean the dividers between the fry as well as get the bottom a bit easier.. :D
 
Andy, go to Home Depot or Lowes and in the shop vac section look for the Micro Vacuum Attachment Kit. It is commonly used on computers. There is a brush and wands in there that work great on bare bottom tanks. Once you have that, going into the plumbing section and get some 3/8 " inside diameter clear vinyl hose to attach to it and you are all set. Once you use it, you won't use anything else.

Dan
 
10/30/11 update

10/30/11 update

I had to leave town for a couple days, got called out to work.

I still have 16 of the 2 week old fry.

To see 10 more pics. posted, closeups of all the fry with my wife's camera.
check them out here.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=19462022&posted=1#post19462022

Here is a pic. of the micro cleaner with a 5 ft. clear 3/8 in. line some one PM me about and one of the 4 week old fry with a one day old fry hitching a ride:)

I still have 3 of the 4 week old fry, but at least these are doing good!
I have a new batch of 59 as of yesterday, I put them with the 4 week old fry so I can still keep track of which ones came from which parents.
It really has made a difference in how fast they grow after I finely got my Dan's Enrichment for the BBS a week ago. And I think I have only lost one after that!

I finished the 3rd treatment with the Quick Cure before I left. I have no floaters or scratchers now.I will start another round this week!

I had just cleaned, did a 20% water change and added more 3 day old BBS enriched with Dan's feed, and some 8 day old Brine Shrimp fed on my green water,and the stuff on the bottom of the tank is frozen Cyclops I just added, yep,still trying to get them started on some frozen food.
I will clean it out in a few hrs.

Thank you Dan for your help!
 

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