Great update, thanks.
Seahorse birth today!
- Thread starter Anemone
- Start date
Tobes
Retired Moderator
Sorry about the little one, but none the less - awesome job from your side Brenda 
Hey Brenda they are looking very healthy & strong but the looks of it, well done!
I'm still waiting for my friends reply to update you on the sea dragons & will let you know when she emails me k.
I'm still waiting for my friends reply to update you on the sea dragons & will let you know when she emails me k.
Thank you everyone!
I think the other runt is on his way out too. He's been looking pretty weak the last few days.
As far as how many are eating frozen....none of them are eating enough to take them off of live yet. I would have to guess that 90% (if not all) are eating some frozen. I see a few of them eating quit a bit of the frozen, some even eat some big pieces.
It will likely be be several weeks before they no longer need the live food. I've been having a tough time keeping up with the brine. They eat so much and I've had a few of my grow out cultures crash during the enrichment process. My brine is normally enriched for 24 hours before being feed, with water changed and new enrichment added after the first 12 hours. When a culture crashes it forces me to use brine that has only been enriched for 12 hours. Hopefully it is providing enough nutrition.
Growing out brine has been difficult and I definately need to find a better way.
I think the other runt is on his way out too. He's been looking pretty weak the last few days.
As far as how many are eating frozen....none of them are eating enough to take them off of live yet. I would have to guess that 90% (if not all) are eating some frozen. I see a few of them eating quit a bit of the frozen, some even eat some big pieces.
It will likely be be several weeks before they no longer need the live food. I've been having a tough time keeping up with the brine. They eat so much and I've had a few of my grow out cultures crash during the enrichment process. My brine is normally enriched for 24 hours before being feed, with water changed and new enrichment added after the first 12 hours. When a culture crashes it forces me to use brine that has only been enriched for 12 hours. Hopefully it is providing enough nutrition.
Growing out brine has been difficult and I definately need to find a better way.
Good job Brenda. Forget about the losses you had and the losses you might face.
In the nature, the majority would have died because of natural selection in terms of weakness or being hunted.
Regarding brine grow out.
Get nannochloropsis, grow the nanno in 20l cannister with a tap. The clear ones for drinking water. Dump a few young or adult brines in there.
Light 24/7 and aeration from an airpump without airstone.
I don't know much about your knowledge regarding growing algae.
If need some advice, have a look in the breeding forum.
Everything is in there. Feel free to ask in the thread if needed, so others can also learn.
Back to the brines. There will be a population growing in the nanno algae.
The population will grow and be stable in quantity without crash until you take them out.
To take them out, open the tap and pour them through a mesh.
The strained water you can pour back if your mesh was sterile. Or add fresh algae when needed as food.
Take out the amount you need for the next day and enrich them in a coke bottle(upsidedown).
As soon as your start enriching them in your culture, you will crash the culture sooner or later. Did that many times with my rotifers. Since I grow them on nanno and enrich them in a bottle, no problems.
In the nature, the majority would have died because of natural selection in terms of weakness or being hunted.
Regarding brine grow out.
Get nannochloropsis, grow the nanno in 20l cannister with a tap. The clear ones for drinking water. Dump a few young or adult brines in there.
Light 24/7 and aeration from an airpump without airstone.
I don't know much about your knowledge regarding growing algae.
If need some advice, have a look in the breeding forum.
Everything is in there. Feel free to ask in the thread if needed, so others can also learn.
Back to the brines. There will be a population growing in the nanno algae.
The population will grow and be stable in quantity without crash until you take them out.
To take them out, open the tap and pour them through a mesh.
The strained water you can pour back if your mesh was sterile. Or add fresh algae when needed as food.
Take out the amount you need for the next day and enrich them in a coke bottle(upsidedown).
As soon as your start enriching them in your culture, you will crash the culture sooner or later. Did that many times with my rotifers. Since I grow them on nanno and enrich them in a bottle, no problems.
Thank you LuckyFish!
I’ve read (somewhere) that in nature only one in 1000 seahorses make it to be an adult. So I’m still doing pretty good with 30 out of 37 still alive.
I have not been able to find clear canisters that large here in the US. Do you know who the manufacturer is of the canister that you use?
I’ve read through your thread…Awesome information!
I have yet to grow my own phytoplankton. I have been purchasing my phytoplankton. I don’t have the space for it. I’ve read enough on it that I am somewhat confident that I can do it. I also have the plankton manual. But I’m sure questions/problems will come up.
I could grow it at Scott’s house but I would only be able to check on it once, sometimes twice a week. Scott is rarely home. He is sometimes gone for several days straight, so having him check on it isn’t going to work either.
I currently grow the brine out to 4 or 5 days on live phytoplankton then I’ve been switching over to algae paste. I’ve been doing this in 5 gallon buckets. I haven’t had any crashes there, it is always during enrichment. I started cutting back on the amount of enrichment that I put in, so we’ll see how that works out.
I do move them to another container for the enrichment.
Here are some pics of my messy lab!
Last edited:
After watching them eat frozen tonight, I have one monster (my largest) that I believe would survive if he was taken off of live food. He just chowed down on about 15 pieces of frozen mysis. He was like a bulldozer plowing through the other seahorses to get to the food. You would have thought it had been days and not hours since the last time he ate! Boy is he going to handful when he grows up!!!!!
At least you have a name for him (bulldozer).
I like the look of "Dexters Lab" with all the food growing .... Kinda like having a newborn kid in the house and then preparing food for them .... great job and well done so far.....
It's been 25 years, but if memory serves me right.....A newborn baby was easier!!!! At least I had the formula right!!!!
I would say made in China, as almost everything that´s available here. I can not imagine, that you can´t get these cannisters in the US.
Crashing a culture during 24 hour enrichment sounds strange. Maybe you really add to much enrichment. Or the brine density is to high. Lack in oxygen? I actually don´t think so.
I showed the pictures of your lab to my girlfriend. She said: "It looks like, she is making it very complicated."
Indeed, it looks more complicated, than it really is.
Do you really need all that for just one or two batches of horses?
Pictures like yours, always put me off in the past. If you want to start breeding marines and you see pictures like that, you don´t want to do it anymore.
It looks like more work and hassle, than I got for my clowns.
Wolgang Mai also got a lab. Crazy when you see the pictures.
Everything has to be simple and efficient.
I guess, when Frans saw these pictures, he is already worried, if he really want to go that route.
Do you really need all that for just one or two batches of horses? I guess, when Frans saw these pictures, he is already worried, if he really want to go that route.
I'm playing catch up on the brine supply. Normally I only have two 2-liter bottles hatching. I've ran into a lot of problems lately. Not only did my enriched brine crash a few times, causing me to dip into my next day supply, but two of my orders of supplies didn't show up when they were supposed to. One that included brine eggs, the other enrichment supplies. One of the orders was placed two weeks ago, and I finally heard back today via e-mail (after I hounded them) that they were out of one of the items on my order. The other supplier who is normally exellent in everything they do had a family emergency. The supplier that failed to notify me that they held up my complete order for 2 weeks when they were out of stock of one item (yet took payment out of my account) will never get my buisness again.
Don't underestimate how much seahorse fry can eat. They eat a lot often. When you are forced to feed brine that hasn't grown out much, the amount of brine needed increases. These 30 horses can eat what was hatched in one of those pop bottles (as NHBS) in one feeding and still be hungry. They eat brine a minimum of 3 times a day. They get frozen a minimum of 3 times a day. Before they started on frozen they got brine 4 times a day.
When I had Reidi fry, which is much more difficult than Erectus fry, and grow much slower, feedings were done 5 times a day. However, when I had the Reidi fry, I also had 5 pop bottles of brine hatching at different times during the day and I never had too much brine. The Reidi didn't even look at they mysis until they were around 2 months old. It was around 4 months before the Reidi were at the stage that these 4 1/2 week old Erectus are now, so relying on frozen to provide nutrition wasn't an option.
Raising most seahorse fry is extremely difficult. Not only is food a problem, there is sterilization and ciliates. Tanks have to be wiped down daily. Equipment has to be sterilized. Brine shrimp is probably one of the dirtiest creatures on the planet. It can introduce ciliates and all kinds of nasty bacteria, and that is assuming that you decapsulate. If you don't decapsulate there are more problems. Then there is the heat issue...seahorse fry do best kept under 70 deg. Fahrenheit. Kept above that and the bacteria and ciliates can kill your fry rather quickly. Some people here in the US actually go as far as steralizing their brine in peroxide to kill off any bacteria. These people have more success than those that don't use the peroxide. I haven't gone that far, but I am seriously considering it for the future.
Seahorse are not like other fish, they don't have a true stomach. Their digestive tract is minimal. So what goes in quickly comes out. Without continuous feedings they will quickly starve to death as fry. As adults they can go to two feedings a day when trained to frozen.
Unfortunately, there is a lot that needs to be discovered. Hopefully some day we will have more answers.
Last edited:
I think anyone that has ever raised seahorses (dwarfs not included) would agree with that statement. However the final result can be extremely rewarding.
I lost the other little runt tonight. Yesterday morning I noticed something under his jaw. I thought that it was just a piece of food that got stuck on him. But it was there throughout the day. So I began to think it may have been a growth of some sort. Since this guy never really grew much I'm wondering if he didn't have some sort of growth that caused eating problems. The growth was still there tonight when I found him dead. The other possibility is injury. Unfortunately he was just too tiny to get a good look at him.
All part of the process, Brenda. Hopefully you will get used to it, so it doesn't hurt so much. When I culled my first clowns, it was not a nice feeling. Now after the third time, I am use to it. I give life. In someone elses tank, the larvae would get eaten up and/or going through the overflow. With that in mind, it is much easier to deal with dead ones.
Oh I'm definately used to it. I've had several batches of SH fry. There is no way to completely get around the losses. You can improve greately but there will always be those that are not going to make it. I've culled the weak, euthanized the sick and siphoned the dead.....thousands! The losses hasn't stopped me now, and it isn't going to. With each batch I learn something new.
95% would be nice, but realistically I don't believe I could physically keep up with it when they start giving birth to hundreds at a time every few weeks.
I do have someone who is going to take any fry that I can't keep up with. When she gets over loaded I will find someone else to take them.
I do have someone who is going to take any fry that I can't keep up with. When she gets over loaded I will find someone else to take them.