How to breed seahorses in your saltwater aquarium
We’ve had 8 seahorses in our 150g seahorse exhibit now for 5 months and now they are having a new batch of babies every month (sometimes more often). I thought I would share our experience as we grow them up. I’ve kept seahorses a few times before, but this is the first time I ever tried to breed and rear them.
The species of seahorse we are exhibiting here is Hippocampus erectus, which is local to the New England coast and can be found in backwaters and marshes. The ones we have came from 2 locations. Four were from the New Englan Aquarium, and the other four were from Pro Aquatix (a tropical fish/coral breeder in Florida).
We are now growing out batch #3. The first batch was a dud, as often the case where a seahorses first brood is less robust than later broods. I kind of think of this as the first time parent syndrome. The second batch we were not ready for them – and even though we fed them newly-hatched brine shrimp (not enriched), most of the babies were not large enough to eat the brine, and those that were would ingest air at the surface and then later die.
So now we are on our 3rd batch, which just hatched 3 days ago. We now have rotifers being cultured (about 1/4 the size of brineshrimp nauplii), and this batch of seahorses is the largest one yet. They still tend to congregate at the surface, so we are experimenting with different approaches to preventing this air-ingestion problem. Once we have that licked, I think we are going to be awash in baby seahorses.
Please leave a comment below and let us know if you are interested in the detailed methods we are using to breed these seahorses. If we get enough responses then we will go ahead and provide the detailed procedures for you. Also, let us know if you have experience in breeding seahorses.
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Hello, friends,
I am from caracas, Venezuela. Actually I am triying to rise a group of seahorses fry that where born in my tank from a seahorse I got already pregnat. I took it all newborn with a glass very carefully from main tank to nursery tank, first day, almost half died, in fact, I was not prepared for that because they arrive impromptu, that was last friday, 4 days ago since today is wednesday. Now I think I have like 80, but some of them are swiming under water ans they seem very nice there, and some of them are floating on surface. When I looked further I noticed that the ones are floating on water surface, have an air bubble inside them, Im not sure, I think that is happening, now I have read a lot about air intake and how to avoid it, but I dont know if they can be saved once they had took air. They are triying to swimn inder water but simply the cant. I try to help them trowing water little by little on them, so they went down, but after water presure release them, they com back up like a baloon.
I would like to shar with you what I am doing here, and please, if you know how to cure the air intaking thing I really really apreciate that.
By the way I am giving them live phytoplankton home grown and one day fresh baby brine srhimp. I am working on rotifers now but not have anough population yet to give them away.
I wpuld kie to know more about your breeding system.
Thanks and good look.
Joel Zambrano
umm, i do not have any sea horses, but i wanted to know what the temperature and everything else has to be?
how big should the tank be and can you get sea horses in Australia?
Hello, Joel. Thanks for the comment. We have experienced the same issue you mentioned, whereby the baby seahorses ingest air bubbles from snapping at baby brine shrimp at the surface. Unfortunately, I am in the same boat as you and don’t yet have a solution for helping them get rid of the air bubble – once they have ingested it.
One solution that has worked well is one that focuses more on preventing this problem. The solution is to grow the babies in 2-Liter soda bottles w/ a rigid airline wand. The bubble rate is roughly 2-4 bubbles per second. It is very important that the water level be set right where the neck narrows down – in other words don’t let the water level go up into the neck or below it (just at the bottom of the neck). This enables a slow bubble rate to sweep this small water surface – thus preventing the baby seahorse from being able to stay at the surface. It also creates slow enough water movement so that the baby seahorses can still track and eat their food (baby brine shrimp).
Another solution is to wrap the walls of the baby seahorse rearing container in black (paper, paint, plastic wrap, etc.) so that they baby seahorses can better see their food (baby brine shrimp). This will also make them less likely to use the surface to silhouette the baby brine shrimp against the water surface.
One other key piece to the puzzle is to enrich the baby brineshrimp with Super Selco. There are other similar products, but the key is an enrichment that is high in Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (HUFAs). This is key to the seahorses development. Baby brineshrimp by themselves are rather poor nutritionally. The one exception is right after the seahorses are hatched.
Right after the seahorses are hatched they have a yolk that sustains them for the first 24 hours whereby they don’t yet eat zooplankton. Thus, after 24 hours, we offer rotifers (enriched with Super Selco) and newly-hatched baby brineshrimp (24 hrs old – not enriched). We only offer enriched baby brineshrimp after the first week, because enriched baby brine shrimp are simply too big for newly hatched seahorses.
As for the daily routine, we do daily 100% water changes on the baby seahorses in their 2-Liter soda bottles – using water from the exhibit tank where the adults are (and where they were hatched). For the water change, we move the baby seahorses by small cups or spoon – do not use a turkey baster as this is too tramatic and can injure them. A net is also too tramatic unless it is already submerged in a beaker, so that the seahorses are not impinged against the net. Feeding occurs immediately after the water change is complete.
Hope this is of help to you.
Warren
Hello, Joey. The target temperature for your seahorses depends on the species you are keeping. The ones we are keeping are Hippocampus erectus, and are local to the temperate waters off of Massachusetts. We keep our adults in the exhibit at 76F.
In Australia, there are about 25 species of seahorse. As for where to get them, I would strongly recommend you get captive-raised seahorses. One of the most widely respected breeders is called Ocean Rider. You can order seahorses directly from them (online) at http://www.seahorse.com. They also have good information on their site for caring for seahorses. In particular, their “Vibrance” enrichment product is fantastic. You sprinkle it onto a small block of frozen mysis shrimp (best food for seahorses) and it gets absorbed immediately and the seahorses eat it readily.
A nice size tank for seahorses is a 29g (high). The “high” refers to the tank being taller than it is wide or front-to-back, as this gives the seahorse room to migrate up and down. It is also recommended that you provide something for the seahorses to hitch to. Any kind of plastic plant works well for this.
Thanks again for your question and let me know if I can be of further help.
Warren
Hello friends,
All of my small seahorses that I mention in the last post are all dead, as I unfortunenally expected, they lived for only one week. What I didn’t understand is that they all died, the ones qith bubbles inside them, and the ones that were swiming all around under water.
But now my couple is pregnat again. I would like to know if you can send me a picture of your setup, I would like to try later, to see if I can raise them all, so I can pay at least what I spend in my aquarium, and help to avoid people capture them from the sea, This time I am going to be more prepared to received the new sea horse babies. Thank you for all,
Joel
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