New seahorse fry

[autochek]

The male Eructus we bought Jennm just spit out about 120 fry. I got cought with my pants down and didn't have anything hatched for them. I have added some home cultivated phyto and the very small particles from a chunk of brine I thawed. Should I add some Cyclopeeze to the mix. I have started a hatch of brine for tomorrow. It looks like I got my hands full for a while. If I can get 5 to make it on this first batch I will be amazed. We have them in a setup like you showed us with the round bowl and the tubing glued inside of it.
Any suggestions will be wonderful.
Thanks Tom and Darlene

[autochek]

Oops forgot a pic of the new youngins.

[germy]

congrats buddy, cohibas all around

[VWD]

Hey Tom, Thats great, Congrats!

[autochek]

Thanks guys, I gotta keep em alive now. Wish I had some Cubans to pass around.

[VWD]

Tell You what Tom , I hope You can keep them alive. I found them in the past to be a little hard. But you got them out and not in the main tank.good luck, Keep them alive and I will buy a few.

[Loverotties]

Wow sweet keep it up!thats awsome!

[Twitterbait]

Congrats. Just to warn you... even the best keepers usually only get 10 at most to survive all the way so don't worry too bad if you lose a few. I would try Cyclopeeze and please let us know if they take it. if that doesn't work then go and try to get some frozen baby brine shrimp and add some vitimins. if they don't take any of it then you will need to culture brine and feed them newly hatched brine. let me know if you have any questions. I do have a few ideas for filtration that will not hurt them.

[autochek]

Thanks everyone, so far they've made it thru the night. Twitter I could have taken a better pic showing the airline glued to the left side of the bowl about 3 inches down. It seems to be moving the water welll and keeping them off the top. This was something JennM showed us. Today they will be getting a new larger bowl and I will need some of your ideas as this progresses. As far as survival, I would be ecstatic to have 10 make it.

[FishDaddy]

Awesome, Tom! Congratulations on the new arrivals! Jenn sure knows her stuff about Seahorses (and other stuff, too.) and sounds like you're on the right track. Hope you get many 'grownups' out of the litter!

Dick

[autochek]

Thanks Dick I'm gonna give it a heck of a try.

[Twitterbait]

I have had great filtration success with the attached setup. this works with all babies fish because it allows for good filtration without sucking up the kids. see the pic and the explination.

1. get a 10 gallon tank and drop in an undergravel filter
2. attach 1 of the undergravel tubes to the undergravel filter rack.
3. cover the UGF with an inch or so of crushed coral
4. cover the crushed coral with 1.5 -2" of aragonite sand
(do not mix the sand and crushed coral)
5. then take a HOB filter and place the suction tube into the downdraft tube of the UGF
6. use some silicone or something to seal the top of the downdraft tube shut so the HOB filter will only suck water from the UGF

fill the tank with some seasoned water and start the HOB. the sand will keep the babies from getting sucked into the filter. the crushed coral will keep the sand from sifting into the UGF. this also allows for good water circulation and filtration.

[JennM]

Wow that little guy didn't waste any time, did he?!

Congratulations! Those are BIG fry - that's great. I'm sure they are from your filly, I don't think he was successful courting the ladies here at the shop.

Good job on the Kriesel setup. I see you've received some other advice for nursery tanks - they may work on other species, but keep them in the Kriesel until they are hitching. Been there, done that with 10-gallon tanks, dividers, sponge filters - had a lot of heartbreak as there was not enough agitation to keep them off the surface, they got caught between the tank and divider, and got wedged under the sponge filter and died... too many hazards for seahorse fry.

I stuck with the Kriesel right until they were large enough to go into a proper tank. You might want to thin them out among 3 or 4 bowls - I used to keep about 20-30 per bowl - that way if you have something catastrophich happen in one ... all your fry aren't in one basket, so to speak.

They should be OK until you get the brine hatched. They are born with a bit of yolk still to burn so you're ok for the first 24 hours. Baby brine are the way to go with erectus. Rotifers are much smaller and even my tiny H. reidi wouldn't eat them, and they are smaller than erectus fry. Certain smaller H. reidi (from cooler waters?) may eat them, I've heard mixed opinions about that, but for yours, Artemia should be fine. Decapsulate the eggs - this makes them hatch faster, makes them more nutritious (the artemia doesn't spend all its energy hatching) and cuts down on hydroids. If you search for my user ID on this forum and "decapsulate" you'll probably find my technique archived here.

Hope you noticed when he got pregnant because chances are, by now, he's pregnant again, and you'll want to keep track of the gestation, as it varies from pair to pair, but if memory serves, it's about 28 days for erectus.

I've read that in nature, only about 1 in 1000 survives to adulthood - so don't beat yourself up too badly if you have lots of losses. Of course in controlled conditions, odds are better, but keep those figures in mind as you work your hiney off to feed and clean those little boogers!

I kept a small piece of live rock about golf ball sized, in each bowl, and a strand of caulerpa. Helped with biological.

Don't fuss too much about water changes, I found they did a bit better in less-than-perfect water.

Don't overfeed - best to do a few small feedings at intervals. They will eat constantly and I have actually seen seahorse fry poop out live brine - they ate so fast that nothing digested. Smaller feedings with rests in between gives their short digestive tract a chance to hold the food and squeeze some nutrition out of it.

Gut load your older brine with phyto. I accomplished this with buckets of nasty used tank water, on my back step. When I siphoned off uneaten brine, feces and dirty water, I put it in buckets in the hot sun. Microalgae fed on the organics in the water, and the brine fed on that. Before long I had a self-sustaining adult brine culture that went for 2 years, and thrived on neglect. No filters, no heaters - buckets iced over in winter and came to life again in spring. Adult brine made a nice treat for my other fishes and corals. Figured all this out because I was too cheap to throw away the brine that wasn't eaten!

Hope all this helps, you might also want to search archives with my user name and "seahorse" too - a few years ago I was right into it and shared much of what I learned.

HTH

Jenn

[VWD]

Wow jenn, You have it worked out, I will keep You in mind when I get my tank set up for seahorses. I have had them in the past and they did very well other then I could not keep the fry alive. I al working on a 37 gallon seahorse onlt tank all natural with some live rock and Macroalgae.

[autochek]

Sound like another forum topic to think about.
Thanks for the help Jenn. I will have Darlene go and pick up another 2 or 3 bowls today.
My house looks like a science lab already with hoses and stuff bubbling all over right now.