A journal of an attempt to raise Seahorse Babies

[howdy20012002]

i haven't been adding the shrimp yet
tomorrow I am going to try
Neal

[michika]

If you follow the Talkingreef Podcast, there is a instructional video on brine shrimp. I'm sorry I was't able to find the link!

[howdy20012002]

I thought things were going smooth a couple of days ago. I had no deaths for that day.
However, there has been a couple of major setbacks yesterday and today.
yesterday, the brine shrimp that I had attempted to hatch didn't hatch so I had no fresh hatched brine shrimp to feed them. I lost 5 yesterday.
And over last night, the airpump vibrated itself off the table and the air hose came out of the bowl.
I lost another 4 this morning.
I now have 2 left.
The good news, the male looks like he is ready to pop again and I think there is going to be alot more this time as he is getting really big.
So, I am going take this as a learning experience and move on with the next batch.

[woodcarver]

I would say 16 days was a good effort . Make sure you brine shrimp eggs are from a reliable source. You should have no problem hatching them .I used to have two bottles on the go which gave me a continuous supply.
Two teaspoons of sea salt per bottle ,good aeration. I stood the bottles in a small tank with a heater in to ensure correct temp and got at least 80 %-90% hatch rate.
Keep trying

[howdy20012002]

Well I have 1 left.
looking good.
and I also now have another batch of about 50 more babies to attempt to raise again. (born Friday)
Man, this is going to be alot of work.
I am going to try to learn how to decapsulate the brine shrimp as I think that may have been why a couple of them died from eating the shell
wish me luck with this new batch.
Neal

[Beverly]

Good luck with the new fry, Neal

[woodcarver]

Hey Neil , Good luck with the new batch . Not to be pushy but you should not need to de-capsulate the brine shrimp eggs . If you are using the pop bottle method the shrimp and shells are completely separated when you allow the hatched shrimp to syphon out of the bottom airline leaving the shells on the top of the water ! If you want to make absolutely certain shine a light at the bottom of the bottle ,as the shrimp are attracted to the light.
Hope the last little guy survives.
....................Dave

[Raf]

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.

[howdy20012002]

As far as I know, they are reidis.