Trying to raise H.Kuda fry

[Lenen]

Hi everyone

Last night a friend of mine was looking at my seahorsetank. The walls was covered in algae, but anyway - she managed to spot a couple of baby seahorses. So ofcourse we had to put the movie on hold, and I started stressing with, well... everything!

First I got 8 small fry out of the water, I also took out the parents, since his belly is still quite big. I have no idea as to the age of the fry. I have 2 clowns, 1 mandarin and 2 bangai cardinals in the seahorsetank, so they might have eaten most of the fry. The ones we found were floating close to the surface.

It took some time before I had the aquarium ready, so they hade to make do with this saladbowl for a couple of hours (hope I managed to post the pictures):

Here you have some better pics of the fry:

Here is a picture of my male H. Kuda.

I still think his belly is quite big...

 

[Lenen]

So, when I was waiting for the saltwater to mix, I called a friend who is currently trying to breed clowns and bangaii cardinals.

Luckily he had artemia, startupculture for green-water and a startupset for rotifer.

So I met him today, got everything, went to a lfs and got some more equipment, bought a second small tank and then I started reading online about raising H.Kuda fry.

Got a bit dissapointed when I realised that fry who float in the surface usually dont do so well - but, it will be fun to try anyway! Maybe I can gain some experience before they have more babies.

 

[Lenen]

So, after reading online I have tons of questions.

It all comes down to: What is the best way to do this?

Can I start feeding with live artemia?
Do I need to enrich the artemia the first week?
I read somewhere that they startet with rotifer, then used artemia, is this the way to go?
Copepods, is that someting I shold try?

I think I will by some glass jars, easy to clean and cheap, for the fry.
How many jars will I need? I was reading about someone who hade 12.
Do I need light? And if I do, will a worklamp be good enough?
Any suggestions as to how I can ceep a steady temperature?
What is the best temperature?
Do the fry need something to hold on to?

I am guessing that the first 8 fry will eventually die for me, but it would be nice to have everything ready for the next time.


Hope someone has some answers/some input as to how I should do this

 

[rayjay]

Seahorses often release "warning babies" a day or two before the main batch so if the pouch is still large you may still be going to get a lot more babies.
There are many ways people try to raise fry and kuda fry like reidi fry are more difficult because they are pelagic and don't hitch for a week or two.
They often are smaller than benthic types like erectus, and need enriched rotifers to start, followed by enriched grown out brine shrimp nauplii.
There isn't a great deal of useful information on kuda fry specifically but if you go to the "org" in the propagation and rearing forum, look for a sticky"Ewans popped this morning" and there are a multitude of methods shown there.
The search feature might show others.
Copepods are too expensive to buy as food for raising fry although they are more nutritious than rots or brine nauplii that aren't enriched.
If you have cultures growing that can be kept sterile then you could use them but cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to fry.
My fry page may give some insight but I think I'm the only one that raises reidi fry in the manner that I do as I failed 9 previous attempts using methods others have been successful with.
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/fry.html

 

[TamiW]

I suspect that is H. reidi not H. kuda. A side profile of dad would help confirm that.


As for kuda specifically, they are a bit larger than reidi, and can take bbs on day one, at least mine can, though I'm feeding San Francisco Bay strain, which is slightly smaller. If they are indeed kuda, I'm still working out the kinks on raising them, but I have two fry at 1.5 months old. I started them on copepods and baby brine shrimp to start, and alternated feeding the two. Yes, they were able to eat the bbs right away and would have pink bellies.

I lost most due to inadequate hygiene I believe, I kept losing them even after they would eat and grow, eventually twitching and dying with their heads turning white after death. I plan on raising them in blue round tubs though I haven't finished the setup for that yet.

 

[Lenen]

Thanks for the answers

@ rayjay: I did`nt know about the "warning babies", but ofcourse that is a good explanation as to why his belly is still big.

I`ve been reading "Ewan popped this morning" as you suggested, and I think I will try feeding with freshly hatched bbs.

I`ve been looking at your page earlier, and I think I will try a setup with big glass/plastic jars, like you do. Makes cleaning the tanks/jars easy
Do you let the fry live in the jars with green water? I know that you are writing something about this on the web-page, but I dont fully understand...


@FishGrrl: I`m quite sure that they are H.Kuda. Mostly because the store told med so (the horses comes from TMC, not wildcaught). And because I see a big difference between my H.Reidi couple and the H.Kuda couple. But, the male Kuda was suddenly in love with the female H.Reidi, and for her sake he changed his colours... Now he got his own tank with the female H.Kuda, and his colours are comming back to normal again

Since you are trying to raise H.Kuda, could you tell me a bit more about it? Like, how often do you feed, how big is the tank, stuff like that?

 

[rayjay]

Do you let the fry live in the jars with green water?

Yes, there is greenwater in there up until they are all converted to frozen foods.
Lights are on 24/7 and this keeps the greenwater growing, using up ammonia produced by the fry, and the live foods in the container can feed off the greenwater so they at least have some nutrition added after the initial gut enrichment prior to placing the food in the jars.
Every fourty-eight hours clean and sterilize the jars and then completely new replacement of the water and the enriched live food.

 

[DanU]

I agree with FshGrrl, from the photo provided, it looks like H. reidi. As she said, a good side profile will confirm it. Fish stores are often wrong with labeling, especially if their source mislabels them. So it may not be their fault if they are mislabeled.

Dan

 

[TamiW]

Thanks for the answers

Since you are trying to raise H.Kuda, could you tell me a bit more about it? Like, how often do you feed, how big is the tank, stuff like that?

If they are kuda, this is what I've done so far, though I haven't really been successful. Though perhaps you can learn from my mistakes.

I started out feeding the fry alternating copepods and newly hatched brine shrimp. Due to work constraints, I was feeding 3x a day, morning, immediately after work, and right before bed, leaving the lights on 24 hours. Sometimes I snuck home for lunch too, but not often did I have the time to do that, so 3x was about it. I had them set up in a fishbowl/kriesel inside a 10 gallon which is part of a shared grow out system. After about a week, I moved to a more bbs centric diet though still offered copepods occasionally. With the bbs, I alternated newly hatched bbs, and bbs enriched with algamac 3050 and naturose powder.

Most did well the first 2 - 3 weeks, with a small number of losses, but then I kept losing more, they'd start to waste away, ones that were previously eating well would lose interest in food and get glassy eyed. After a day, those individuals would stop swimming and lay on the bottom and die.

I wasn't too diligent about cleaning the bottom, and after reading on seahorse.org about similar problems, I cleaned the tank they were in and the fishbowl really well. That stemmed the tied of loses for a while, but they came back. I *think* the problem was just high organic waste and bacteria, so I'm in the planning stages of a rearing system using blue round tubs. Currently experimenting with a design using 5 gallon buckets and hope to have it built in a couple weeks.

In the mean time, I have two left; at just over 1.5 months old, and they're taking enriched adult brine now. The parents had a failed egg transfer right after this brood were born and have been a little lazy getting on making more babies, so it might be a little while before I get a chance to try again. If I do get more fry before my tubs are finished, I'll be using the fishbowl method until then. (I have an expecting reidi so its a race against the clock now).