What type of horses are they, I believe Anthony already asked you?
As for your losses, we have tried raising reidi's several times and found that the losses seem to come from three main reasons, some which you may have done trying to raise yours.
Firstly, if the babies snick air, they are good as dead. It seems they cannot evacuate those tiny bubbles stuck in their gut. You have to be very careful while catching them in the main tank and then transporting them into their own tank. This is problem is further escalated once you use an airpump to create current only to find micro bubbles sticking to the glass bowl or floating in the water coloumn for you babies to snick. Also, be careful where you place the light on their tank. These guys are attracted to light instinctvely, so if you place a light on top of their tank, they have a good chance at snicking air.
Secondly, ammonia poisoning. Having them in such a small bowl and feeding them so much food so often will give you major headaches with ammonia spikes. This is a major killer and no doubt a cause of some of your death IMO. It is vital to find a balance of tank size, food concentration and MOST IMPORTANTLY waterchanges leading to superior water quality.
Lastly, feeding the correct food at the right times. Yes rotifers are great, but are they eating them? or are the rotifers droping from pH or temp shock as soon as they enter your baby tank, hence ammonia problems. BBS is important too, but when to make the transition? Also, I have heard numerous problems with baby horses overfeeding on BBS or getting damaged by BBS in their guts. BTW, decapsulating BBS eggs is very easy using bleech.
All in all, the difficulty of raising ponies depends on the SPECIES and the equipment used and of course your experience raisng these guys.
Anyways, thats all I gots to say, good luck with the next batch but don't get dissapointed if history repeats itself. If these guys where easy we would see $1.99 weekend specials on ponies at the LFS.
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