Salt Babies part 2

kizanne

Member
So its been about 5 months since an update. (if you want alot more detail there is an Exciting times at Salt Babies Thread) http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2683885

My daughter (age 20) is joining the business, so no profits for me LOL. I hope she enjoys it as much as I do. With the extra hands I might be able to stabilize my parvocalanus production opening up so much more for breeding. Though she is in college so that may not be that much extra help.

My Barbouri male is still alive he still hasn't healed all the infection but it is getting less deep an I believe eventually will heal up. I just put him and the female in a 10 gallon tank (they don't swim much and are not that big). I had them before in a small tank for dosing medicine, changing water and did not want him pregnant so he could heal. The 10 is only an intermediate step I have a 30 gallon for them once I do a little changing to it. Since they are feeling better and have started trying to breed again they do have some flashes of some really cool colors but for most the day a rich mahogany brown.

The erectus pair had a batch back in the late fall. I have changed out the male for one of my males that showed very slow growth as I'd love a dwarf erectus line. I also have a female who is still very small despite her age but they are in an erectus tank with two males and two females. The large female is breeding with a smaller male. The other two haven't decided to get together yet. But I'm back in the baby business.

I also have about 11 baby saltwater mollies. And looking to make more of these.

My blue pipe is still cycling eggs each week and I'm hoping this summer to give that a shot after I get my copepods, parvocalanus straight.

I have 4 dragonface pipefish in the erectus/blue pipe tank but they just aren't breeding I find it hard to believe I don't have opposite sexes but maybe they aren't all the same species as dragonface covers 11 species. I did get them from the store but not all at the same time (some at the same time). I'm beginning to worry about if they will ever pair up. My daughter just loves the dragons so breeding them would be the best. I wonder if it just isn't tall enough or something.

The dwarf cuttle fish all lived to about 8 months but then all died shortly after going into a different tank. No eggs that was disappointing. Ordered 10 more eggs from the LFS to try again. They are just so neat to watch hunt! And I kind or like playing hide and seek with my fish tanks.

My next conquest I hope to be Barbouri then blue strip. And I hold out hope that I can get my male coral croucher to actually mate with the female coral croucher. They split when I added them to the tank and haven't gotten back together since. I'm not sure they actually know the other is in the tank.

I have right now stabilized a tetra culture and working on T-iso but contamination concerns are still high. I have a few rots laying around and Tigger pods though the seahorse babies have put a hurt on those.
I also have some breeding strombus snails (the small ones). And I'm restarting my tisbe pods this week. If I can get the T-iso to build up and make lots then I'll order parvacalanus around May 14th so that by the time I'm done with the summer workshop I can have several weeks and copepods to play with blue stripe!!!!

Who knows if I pay attention I might if find my cardinal holding eggs :)
 
Well It's near the end of school so I'm hoping to gear up for some summer fun. I have work until the 20th of June but then I'm going to try the blue stripe pipefish. To further that endeavor I bought a few algagen copepod packs and ordered T-iso.

So I have tisbe, parvo, apocyclops, psuedo, tigger and acartia. Right now they are small populations but I'm gonna use this time to try to grow the population for blue pipefish trials for june. Usually I get to busy and something crashes or the t-iso gets contaminated with nano. I haven't had much luck catching babies so once the copepods are larger populations I'll try catching the boy and putting him in a breeders net in a small tank when he's due.

Looks like my barbouri male might be pregnant after his long break to heal. He has started showing some cool colors. He has a deep reddish brown that gets broken up with yellow. Almost reminds me of a volcano flow with brown on top and yellow cracks. I'll try to get a picture of it because it is kinda cool.
 
Here he is flashing colors. Hard to tell if he is carrying or just expanded trying to attact the girl. He flashes colors almost every morning. then goes back to a ruddy red/brown.
At least he is healing in this picture it's hard to tell but he is still recovering from his infection from when he was shipped to me in December.

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Don't think the Barbouri is pregnant. My T-iso is not flourishing so I have to order more. Tisbe's are doing well. Psuedo is doing well.

Pretty sure my babylonia formosae has finally given me babies. I had gotten two as clean up crew to the seahorse tank and two on purpose because they have been known to spawn in aquaria. I have some baby snails running around that I think are their babies that's exciting. We will see how many grow up.
 
Well I keep ordering T-iso from different places and what I get in the mail isn't motile. I've ordered again this weekend as I still have some parvo's alive.

The apocyclops are doing well and don't need T-iso so I may try to catch the blue pipefish and try some larva on apocyclops and tisbe.

I can't tell if the male blue is currently holding. Pretty sure my male Cardinal is holding but the female never lets him carry to term. catching him in the 125 is going to be next to impossible but who knows maybe I'll tear it apart and try. Coming into to summer I'm looking to get a few things going. The saltwater mollies have let a few more babie go so I have about 20 of those now.
 
Well of course now that I have some copepods the blue isn't holding and hasn't been for many days.

I'm going to do a tank cleaning / water change today or tomorrow and hope that spurs them to action. I'll probably also give them some live baby brine since I've read live foods can help trigger spawning.
 
Well a few more molly babies. The mollies eat the babies fast and I haven't bothered to catch the female and isolate her. Hopefully we'll get some cuttlefish eggs soon because the molly babies are cuttlefish food. Though if they grow to a good size my LFS will sell a few.

I found someone who wants seahorse babies regular so I may not have to ship like last year. My blue stripe pipefish have been dancing and hanging out all day but still no transfer of eggs.

The parvocalanus culture is blooming and I don't have larva or enough T-iso. These two things never seem to line up.

I lost my ruby reds a while back so for my Bday I ordered a pair. I hope to condition them and have them spawning by mid-summer. But conditioning / surviving may take longer.

Kind of excited I have a pair of Coral crouchers that split after they were introduced to the tank. Well yesterday I did a massive cleaning and moving all kinds of stuff around. They have found each other. They are in a bad spot but at least they are together.
 
So my box arrives and my husband is unpacking it to acclimate and my FEMALE ruby red of the pair is missing. What you got to be kidding me!! I even put in the notes of the order if you didn't have both cancel the whole order.

And..... I had added a dragonface pipefish to the order to get free shipping and to hopefully get some mating going on......

Here's the beautiful dragonface I received.
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Needless to say I've called the company and await their solution.
 
For those not as familiar with pipefish the above was sarcasm. While he is pretty he's a yellow banded pipefish not a dragonface.
 
Pretty exciting.
Our local marine lab which works in conjunction with the local university and provides wild samples to universities and aquariums is going to work with me. He would much rather ship out captive bred specimens than wild caught for the institutions that want seahorses (assuming they aren't researching wild seahorses). I don't charge much for my small seahorses so he can pay me for mine (and trade some things I want) and save the wild population and work. It's a win for me, win for him, win for the wild sehorses and a win for the institutions that don't have to wean, deworm, destress wild specimens.

Since this is new we will see how well it works. I don't think he gets too many orders so I'll probably still sell some through ebay/craigslist and such.
 
Really cool to hear about this (even though I don't follow your thread normally). Thanks for providing updates!
 
So I'm out of town at a workshop. Tried to set everything up for my family to take care of things. Well surprise the Barbouri was pregnant in the tiny 10 gallon medical tank. Babies this morning while I'm going to be gone for 4days.
 
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