seahorse ID

[ProudMom]

I will be moving my seahorses to a new tank soon, they are in my 125 g tank now. But I have alot of water current and anemones.
I just want somebody to ID my seahorses and if they are hardy?
I have 3 orange, black and yellow kuda female that is not showing on the pictures.
Thanks in sdvsnce

 

[seas_inside]

I think that one is most possibly erectus, maybe reidi.

 

[redhorse]

Seas first guess looks about right. Erectus and a beauty at that.

 

[ProudMom]

ID

ID

Thsnk you very much how about the black one on the second Picture?
I got the red one for $76.00 with shipping on e-bay

 

[seas_inside]

It's kind of hard to tell from that pic... could you get a closeup?

 

[ProudMom]

bump

bump

see if this helps

 

[seas_inside]

I think that's also an erectus.

 

[BruceW]

The orange one is erectus the dark one is H.reidi.

You need to get them out of that tank pronto because the anemones can kill them.

Bruce

 

[zoster.keeper]

Oops, still working on my IDing skills, thanks Bruce. And you're right about the anemones get 'em out asap.

 

[seas_inside]

And so much water current isn't good for them either.

 

[pledosophy]

Pic 1 erectus
Pic 2 reidi
Pic 3 reidi

The reidi in pic 2 apparently has some type of wound on it's tail, most likely from an anemone or one of your LPS corals. That candy cane coral in the last pic is a member of the torch family an is capable of killing the horse that is hitched to it IME. becareful

Have you mixed all four of the species yet?

 

[ProudMom]

ID

ID

I only have 3 horses, the one in the pics#1,2 are the same horse. The orange erectus was bought with that spot on his tail.

2 of my seahorses sleep attached to that candycane it is there favorite spot at night. They don't seem to be bothered.

Yes I have put all the species together and they don't seem to bother each other. Two of the horses have bounded though.

Thank you for the interest.

 

[Fredfish]

I only have 3 horses, the one in the pics#1,2 are the same horse

Pic 1 erectus Pic 2 reidi

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

This quite nicely illustrates how hard it is to identify seahorses. If you take the time to look at Vicent's ID guide you will find that there is a lot of variability in the physical characteristics of horses and a number of species are both closely related and look much alike.

To give an idea of the variability here is Vicent's description of the erectus crown " coronet ridge-like, wedge-like or with sharp edges or spines"

So, you could have 3 different erectus with 3 very different coronets and misakenly conclude that you have 3 different species based on that feature.

Having said that, looking at the two horses in the second picture it looks like the dark one has a backward pointing crown, but it is very hard to tell from the picture. That does tend to be a typical characteristic of H. kuda. I do not know if other horses have that swept back crown.

If you look at the files here, starting with the one on morphology and identification, you will get some idea of how to go about IDing your horses.

To best identify a horse, I think you need to look at multiple features to see if you can get a match, or rule out a species based on those multiple features.

Good luck.

Fred

EDIT:
P.S. Not making fun of you pledo, outside of DanU or David from OZ who have raises a lot of different species, I think anyone else could/would make the same mistake. Its just not that easy.

 

[Fredfish]

Just to add something, there is one thing that can help. IF you have a pair that came from the same source and you know are the same species, looking at newborn fry can help.

H. erectus, H. fuscus and one other have very large fry (~ 10mm) that tend to hitch from birth and can feed on newly hatched brine shrimp.

The others have much smaller pelagic fry (3-5mm) that must feed on rotifers or copepod napulii as a first food.

Seeing what size fry you have won't tell you what species you have, but will eliminate some and allow you to focus on other features such as overall size to see if you can further narrow things down.

Fred

 

[Fredfish]

2 of my seahorses sleep attached to that candycane it is there favorite spot at night. They don't seem to be bothered.

Now thats interesting given that that coral will have its feeder (aka stinging) tentacles out at night. I think we still have a lot to learn about what you can keep with horses and what you can't.

It is a pretty safe bet though that the enemones are not a good idea. In the wild they tend to eat small fish among other things and probably pack a significantly nastier sting than the candycane.

Fred

 

[Whylde]

Where did you get the gorgeous orange Erectus?

 

[ProudMom]

ID

ID

I got it from e-bay for $73.00 total including shipping