XXX RATED PICTURE!!!
- Thread starter JennM
- Start date
Fertilization takes place within the male's brood pouch. The first time they mated, I actually saw a small "poof" of sperm just a second before he closed the opening of the pouch. Eggs were spilled in both first and second matings also. This time....nobody spilled anything.
I guess the third time's the charm! Last time (two weeks ago today) about 60 eggs got away. I managed to retrieve 50 or so of them and examined some under the microscope. They are orange, oval shaped and I could see the nucleus at one end of the oval. Very cool
The male also secretes a placental fluid, and the eggs embed inside the membranes within the pouch.
Labor is quite heavy....I could see the pouch contracting (I had sympathy pains!) and then at intervals his body would "jacknife" several times and young would emerge. Since he was premature, some eggs emerged too, and some of the eggs hatched after the fact, but these young didn't seem viable, some were underdeveloped.
I'm hoping with a bigger brood this time, that he carries longer, and has more viable young.
Jenn
The male also secretes a placental fluid, and the eggs embed inside the membranes within the pouch.
Labor is quite heavy....I could see the pouch contracting (I had sympathy pains!) and then at intervals his body would "jacknife" several times and young would emerge. Since he was premature, some eggs emerged too, and some of the eggs hatched after the fact, but these young didn't seem viable, some were underdeveloped.
I'm hoping with a bigger brood this time, that he carries longer, and has more viable young.
Jenn
Jenn,
first of all, congratulations! That is very cool. I have a sea horse thank but I have never been able to breed them. If you don't mind, could you tell me your water parameters or whether you are doing anything special? Are the sea horses wild or captive raised? What kind do you have?
Feel free to e-mail me so we don't clog up the board.
Thank you very much and good luck raising the young!
Eddi
first of all, congratulations! That is very cool. I have a sea horse thank but I have never been able to breed them. If you don't mind, could you tell me your water parameters or whether you are doing anything special? Are the sea horses wild or captive raised? What kind do you have?
Feel free to e-mail me so we don't clog up the board.
Thank you very much and good luck raising the young!
Eddi
I think any conversation that address propagation and such is worthy of "clogging board space" so I'll post my answer here
My tank is a 37 RR Oceanic, 24 W x 24 H x 18 D. I've got a 10 gallon sump/refugium that's teeming with pods. Lots of caulerpa and an LOA 65 watt light help that. Seahorses need lots of top-to-bottom swimming space to mate, although I've read about full-sized horses breeding in a 10 g...so where there's a will there's a way. I find 24" a good height for the big horses, but watching them dance around, I think even 30" deep would work better.....*sigh* next tank....
Main lighting is a 55 w PC, and I keep sponges and softies...all frags, Xenia, a couple of leathers, star polyps.
Horses: ALL wild-caught. Had no luck with tank raised from that well-known company...lost 'em all within a month due to bacterial infection. They seem to be prone to pouch bloat also....had to burp one every couple of days, but I digress...
Current stock: Mated pair (mated AFTER I got them) Hippocampus reidi, aka Brazillians. Big horses, tiny fry. I had ORDERED H. erectus from my wholesaler, and this is what I got. Reidi are usually way expensive, so it was their loss, I got
Cadillac horses at Volkswagen prices
I had ordered 4. One was DOA, and the other was dying, and died 12 hours later (this is direct from wholesaler to LFS where I work). From that I got my good pair.
Next, I ordered 4 "black" seahorses (no species specified) from another wholesaler. One took a look at the yellow reidis that were there, and promptly turned yellow! She's H. kuda. The other three I *think* were H. comes, but they died within 3 or so weeks (cyanide or bleach caught??
)
My last little charge is a tiny either H. reidi or kuda (too young to tell) who was languishing in a local LFS (not the one I work at!). The owner knows me and knows I keep horses, and when I asked him some questions about this tiny creature, floating in a cubicle with no hitches, he gave her to me, fearing she was sick and going to die.
I brought her home to my isolation tank, she found some caulerpa to hitch to, and she's been doing fine for just over a month now.
I haven't seen her eat prepared foods, she just picks pods off the rocks. I think she looked bad in the LFS because she had nothing to hang on to, and was tired of treading water
She's a cutie, only about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of the adults...I have yet to get a picture of her, she's a master of disguise, even though she's a brilliant bright orange.
It took almost no time to get male reidi and female kuda to take PE Mysis. Female reidi took 3 months to try it, but now she eats it. I also feed live Hawaiian red shrimp, ghost shrimp (FW-that's all I can buy locally) and we collected some SW grass shrimp last month in FL, and I've still got some left, which I feed periodically. In FL we also caught a tiny Gulf Pipefish (Syngnathus scovelli), and after his quarantine time was up, he made himself right at home with the seahorses. He now eats PE Mysis too, although they seem almost too big for him!
Water: I do the same thing as my reef, except with my refugium there's lots more tiny organisms. I dose Kent Tech CB part A and B, and once in a while a drop of Lugol's. I change 25% or so of the water every week (big eaters, big poopers) and that seems to keep everybody happy.
That, and a bit of good luck.....
Now....tell me about YOUR horses
Jenn
My tank is a 37 RR Oceanic, 24 W x 24 H x 18 D. I've got a 10 gallon sump/refugium that's teeming with pods. Lots of caulerpa and an LOA 65 watt light help that. Seahorses need lots of top-to-bottom swimming space to mate, although I've read about full-sized horses breeding in a 10 g...so where there's a will there's a way. I find 24" a good height for the big horses, but watching them dance around, I think even 30" deep would work better.....*sigh* next tank....
Main lighting is a 55 w PC, and I keep sponges and softies...all frags, Xenia, a couple of leathers, star polyps.
Horses: ALL wild-caught. Had no luck with tank raised from that well-known company...lost 'em all within a month due to bacterial infection. They seem to be prone to pouch bloat also....had to burp one every couple of days, but I digress...
Current stock: Mated pair (mated AFTER I got them) Hippocampus reidi, aka Brazillians. Big horses, tiny fry. I had ORDERED H. erectus from my wholesaler, and this is what I got. Reidi are usually way expensive, so it was their loss, I got
Cadillac horses at Volkswagen prices
Next, I ordered 4 "black" seahorses (no species specified) from another wholesaler. One took a look at the yellow reidis that were there, and promptly turned yellow! She's H. kuda. The other three I *think* were H. comes, but they died within 3 or so weeks (cyanide or bleach caught??
My last little charge is a tiny either H. reidi or kuda (too young to tell) who was languishing in a local LFS (not the one I work at!). The owner knows me and knows I keep horses, and when I asked him some questions about this tiny creature, floating in a cubicle with no hitches, he gave her to me, fearing she was sick and going to die.
I brought her home to my isolation tank, she found some caulerpa to hitch to, and she's been doing fine for just over a month now.
It took almost no time to get male reidi and female kuda to take PE Mysis. Female reidi took 3 months to try it, but now she eats it. I also feed live Hawaiian red shrimp, ghost shrimp (FW-that's all I can buy locally) and we collected some SW grass shrimp last month in FL, and I've still got some left, which I feed periodically. In FL we also caught a tiny Gulf Pipefish (Syngnathus scovelli), and after his quarantine time was up, he made himself right at home with the seahorses. He now eats PE Mysis too, although they seem almost too big for him!
Water: I do the same thing as my reef, except with my refugium there's lots more tiny organisms. I dose Kent Tech CB part A and B, and once in a while a drop of Lugol's. I change 25% or so of the water every week (big eaters, big poopers) and that seems to keep everybody happy.
That, and a bit of good luck.....
Now....tell me about YOUR horses
Jenn
Jenn,
now you are going to make me look bad! First of all, I should explain that I HAD seahorses but that I am about to reset up my tank. I have a 54 gallon corner tank with about 70 lbs of rock and 50 lbs of cc. I dont have the tank dimensions with me, but it is a tall tank as I know sea horses need vertical space. I have a PC light with 2 36W bulbs. Not a lot of light, but I did not have anything else in the tank.
I had 4 indo yellow seahorses (hippocampus), two pairs. I bought them from a local LFS. One male never started eating and died within four days. The others ate well (libe brine shrimp) and seemed to acclimate well.
About two weeks later I saw the male with a swollen belly and assumed he was carrying babies, only to be very dissapointed when he died. I have since then learned about the pouch bloat but never knew until you just mentioned that you could actually burp them!
One female one day simply stopped eating; I moved her to a holding tank and tried everything I would to make her eat but to no avail. She died after three days. I ended up taking the fourth one back to the LFS, I already had three of them on my conscience.
As I said, I would really like to try again so when I saw your post I decided to message you. I have done a fair amount of research but keep finding contradicting info. One site says they don't live very long, another says the opposite. I have recently found www.seahorses.org, and hopefully that is a good site.
Once again, congratulations!
Eddi
now you are going to make me look bad! First of all, I should explain that I HAD seahorses but that I am about to reset up my tank. I have a 54 gallon corner tank with about 70 lbs of rock and 50 lbs of cc. I dont have the tank dimensions with me, but it is a tall tank as I know sea horses need vertical space. I have a PC light with 2 36W bulbs. Not a lot of light, but I did not have anything else in the tank.
I had 4 indo yellow seahorses (hippocampus), two pairs. I bought them from a local LFS. One male never started eating and died within four days. The others ate well (libe brine shrimp) and seemed to acclimate well.
About two weeks later I saw the male with a swollen belly and assumed he was carrying babies, only to be very dissapointed when he died. I have since then learned about the pouch bloat but never knew until you just mentioned that you could actually burp them!
One female one day simply stopped eating; I moved her to a holding tank and tried everything I would to make her eat but to no avail. She died after three days. I ended up taking the fourth one back to the LFS, I already had three of them on my conscience.
As I said, I would really like to try again so when I saw your post I decided to message you. I have done a fair amount of research but keep finding contradicting info. One site says they don't live very long, another says the opposite. I have recently found www.seahorses.org, and hopefully that is a good site.
Once again, congratulations!
Eddi
Indo yellow sounds like H. kuda to me. Very easy to train to frozen food.
The problem with live brine is it's the equivalent to "fast food"....fills you up but not very nutritious. Ghost shrimp or grass shrimp are better choices, brine for a "treat" now and then. My horses have NO interest in brine. Hawaiian red shrimps are expensive but a nice "treat" too...I try to vary the diet.
Sounds like your horses just didn't acclimate well, OR they might have been bleach or cyanide caught. Many seahorses are actually caught in fishing trawlers' nets, and instead of being thrown back, they are tossed into a barrel on deck and re-sold to collectors/wholesalers, so they've had a rough go of it.
Pouch bloat in males usually has them bobbing upside down, unable to right themselves, because of gas bubbles caused by bacterial infection. If your guy wasn't upside down, he probably WAS pregnant. It's important to be able to know the difference, because one doesn't want to "burp" a pregnant pouch! Most male can flush their own pouch and keep it clean, but for some reason I've seen many posts by OR keepers about bloat, and OR even sells a kit to help burp/medicate...my male reidi has NO problems in this department, so perhaps the OR Mustang speci (whatever speci that may be) is just prone to problems.
It's tough to get healthy specimens...but very rewarding when you do get 'em!
Jenn
The problem with live brine is it's the equivalent to "fast food"....fills you up but not very nutritious. Ghost shrimp or grass shrimp are better choices, brine for a "treat" now and then. My horses have NO interest in brine. Hawaiian red shrimps are expensive but a nice "treat" too...I try to vary the diet.
Sounds like your horses just didn't acclimate well, OR they might have been bleach or cyanide caught. Many seahorses are actually caught in fishing trawlers' nets, and instead of being thrown back, they are tossed into a barrel on deck and re-sold to collectors/wholesalers, so they've had a rough go of it.
Pouch bloat in males usually has them bobbing upside down, unable to right themselves, because of gas bubbles caused by bacterial infection. If your guy wasn't upside down, he probably WAS pregnant. It's important to be able to know the difference, because one doesn't want to "burp" a pregnant pouch! Most male can flush their own pouch and keep it clean, but for some reason I've seen many posts by OR keepers about bloat, and OR even sells a kit to help burp/medicate...my male reidi has NO problems in this department, so perhaps the OR Mustang speci (whatever speci that may be) is just prone to problems.
It's tough to get healthy specimens...but very rewarding when you do get 'em!
Jenn
Oh sure. Lure me in with promises of lurid pictures. Well, I must confess, Jenn, that was a pretty lurid picture. At least as far as seahorses are concerned!!
At least 2 survived from you shipment. Please keep up the good work and keep us posted.
PS: Send more pictures. The racier, the better.
At least 2 survived from you shipment. Please keep up the good work and keep us posted.
PS: Send more pictures. The racier, the better.
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