How many keep seahorses and Cephs?

I never kept seahorses because I always thought they were too delicate and I wouldn't be able to take care of their feeding requirements - I guess it never occurred to me that taking care of cephs was harder than seahorses... but I am an invertebrate zoologist, so I guess I always think it is easier to care for an invert. rather than a vert.

I have raised and bred (unintentionally...) dwarf African frogs - does that count as an unusual pet? They have the smallest tadpoles of any frog, just a few millimeters long when they hatch. Oh yeah, and the tadpoles are carnivorous and all other tadpoles are herbivorous. That was fun, feeding tadpoles you can barely see :bugout: .
 
Cuttlegirl,
If we change the question to "what unusual aquatic animals did you keep before keeping octopuses" then you IN ;>). I wonder how many times Steve and Roy make their students rewrite their thesis questions.

I do find it amusing that you think (thought) seahorses would be HARDER than octopus. They may require more time and observation but I can't make that call yet, particularly since there are things you can DO to try to save a horse when it gets hurt or has other problems (only minorly successful treatments though). The one common ailment I have found, Vibro bacteria infection, is considered untreatable in both although I think Roy has tried treating infected babies.

If your African frogs are the small ones that they call African frogs in the pet store, I lost my last one several months ago. They seem to live several years with no major care requirements. I did have multiples at one time but they never bred and I had no idea they were carniverous as tadpoles. I only recently read the label on the frog food I have always used (and the only one I have ever seen ;>) and was surprised to find that it was vegetarian. I expected I was handling crushed flies all this time (and one family member preferred I didn't feed during dinner because of the misinformation ;>) since our domestic frogs are carnivorous.
 
Brock,
It has been a tough two years for anyone commercially breeding seahorses (and I suspect most any marine fish). There has been a huge influx of wc marine critters from Indonesia and a bumper year for seahorses in the wild in general. My point was that if you wanted to keep cold water horses, they are available as CB and that the H. Capensis, as well as the H. Abdominalis and Ingens are being captive bred for those with an interest. The viable commercial site you mentioned has the H.Capensis right now for a reasonable price - unlike some of their other pricing - which leads me to believe they breed rather well in captivity.
 
dwhatley;84928 said:
Cuttlegirl,
If we change the question to "what unusual aquatic animals did you keep before keeping octopuses" then you IN ;>). I wonder how many times Steve and Roy make their students rewrite their thesis questions.

You are the one who mentioned it first :biggrin2: . I did have to rewrite my thesis question after my first attempt at raising Sepia officinalis failed.

dwhatley;84928 said:
I do find it amusing that you think (thought) seahorses would be HARDER than octopus. They may require more time and observation but I can't make that call yet, particularly since there are things you can DO to try to save a horse when it gets hurt or has other problems (only minorly successful treatments though). The one common ailment I have found, Vibro bacteria infection, is considered untreatable in both although I think Roy has tried treating infected babies.

I guess because everytime I go to an LFS, they mention they are hard to care for and I get my cephs from other sources besides the LFS... that will teach me to listen to the staff at the LFS! :smile:

dwhatley;84928 said:
If your African frogs are the small ones that they call African frogs in the pet store, I lost my last one several months ago. They seem to live several years with no major care requirements. I did have multiples at one time but they never bred and I had no idea they were carniverous as tadpoles. I only recently read the label on the frog food I have always used (and the only one I have ever seen ;>) and was surprised to find that it was vegetarian. I expected I was handling crushed flies all this time (and one family member preferred I didn't feed during dinner because of the misinformation ;>) since our domestic frogs are carnivorous.

The frogs are not hard to keep, it is just unusual to have them breed. These days the ones you find in a pet store are captive bred (they are considered extinct in the wild). Most home aquarists aren't successful raising the tadpoles because of the microscopic live food requirement.
 
Well, mine mated, and had 2 premie fry, but the male died of tail infection WHILE he was preggo...very, very sad. They were always courting though, and I guess having a mirrored background didn't help...
 
I keep both cephs and squid, well i breed both to. I have 2 species These are:

Hippocampus barbouri (zebra-nosed seahorse) and

Hippocampus kuda (yellow seahorse)

I keep alot of other marine fish but cephs and seahorses i find the most intriging,especially the social side of each, they have very distictive personalitys and traits, very similar to us humans i think :smile:

I havnt found keeping seahorses that hard although i feed most of my marine stuff live food, shrimps.. brine shrimp and small fish, ( i live next to the ocean so i can catch alot of live shrimp and fish for my squid each week) I think live food really makes for happy campers.

Sea horses really like the live brine shrimp through most stages of there life, The babies however depending on the species like a mix of 1 day old brine shrimp hatclings and some sort of rotifer/ plankton etc. Even then mortality rates are high with the ponies, the 2 month barrier im always trying to perfect - sometimes is higher than others.

A brine shrimp hatchery isnt to hard, i make one out of a 2lt bottle, salt water mix inside and a airline with a airstone for the first 48hr then they move to a plastic tub with a airstone which i feed them a mix of live rotifers / dried plankton. Takes about 1 1/2 - 2 weeks to get to maturity, i prefer to use shell less brine shrimp eggs just for ease of use.

Plankton cultures are a bit more difficult to keep going but all it takes is practice, theres alot of good articles on the need as far as keeping cultures / raising them.

i think alot of people make the mistake of not having a properly cycled tank and skimp on filtration this leads to early deaths, They like good water :smile:
 
I'm jealous of all of you that live next to the ocean! I think I would have to invent some kind of windowed seawall and just have the ocean as my tank if I was that close.

I have found a great, easy, simple brine hatchery for baby horses and pipes but if you would send me a private message on your fry setup I would appreciate the info. I switched to enriched mysis after using live enriched brine and grass shrimp because I found that the horses actually preferred it and do better with the more nutritional food (and my backyard is freshwater so I don't have the natural supplements you do ;>).

You mentioned cephs and squid, what are you feeding them? So far I am almost sure Trapper has eaten 1 crab (I found the cartilage, intact but without meat or shell) and maybe one hermit (it could have been a shed though). I am hoping to feed him frozen shrimp but so far he doesn't seem interested in eating it. It does bring the grass shrimp and just about all other live food to a gathering spot and I saw him checking out my offering today but he didn't pull the shrimp off the stick. He did move the feeding wand but I am not sure if he was looking for the things feeding on it or just decided it wasn't something he wanted.
 
Well i understand what you are going through, i used to live about 2 hours from the coast then decided to make the move to the coast to be closer to the sea. Im quite sure i will never move away from it again.

Mysis is also another great food, i would try them myself but i havnt found any colonys of them locally yet.

The fry tank is nothing special, i transfer them to a 2ft tank that has a tiny hang on filter which the inlet i have covered with plankton mesh. The hang on filter i remove all the media and put in bioballs as the media with sponge on the top for a pre filter. Ill make some pics and show u later :smile:

I feed my cephs and alot of my fish a shrimp i catch locally (they are about 1inch max), i find them in the esturary grass near the shore, im not sure of what they are called, i call them food :P . i use a net to skim through the weed to collect them. Process takes about 30 mins to get enough food for a week or 2. I just keep the shrimp in a bucket with a airstone as they dont seem to need any filtration to live the 2 weeks.

With your ceph one thing i do with the larger shrimp that sometimes die through collecting, (about 2inches long) is i hold the shrimp by its antennea and "drag" it through water to make it look like its swimming. Sometimes they eat them sometimes they dont, mine are a bit spoilt tho. Maybee you can try that yourself? try tying the antennea to the stick with a loose knot and drag it through the water? I guess its a trial and error thing until you find something that they like, Im sure it would eat the crabs if hungry.
 
I'm a seahorse freak :nyah:.

I'm only fifteen so my ceph/seahorse addiction is kind of put off most of the time. When I was 14 I kept a male H. reidi and had it produce 10 fry. Although I had them last 5 days, I was barely prepared to say the least.

Now, about a week ago, I just bought my latest seahorse (Hippocampus comes AKA the tiger-tail seahorse). While it's wild caught and a delicate species to begin with, it's been doing pretty good. Since my last reidi was infected with vibrio at the same time as it had internal gas bubble disease, I made sure I freshwater dipped my tiger tail before placing into quarantine so it didn't end up like the last one. I'd love to get a male in and try breeding them (and document it), even though they are notorious as being one of the hardest seahorses to raise from birth.

In a few days (if i'm allowed to) I may order a small H. erectus also, or might purchase a small octo (joubini). All depends on how much money I have leftover and what i'm willing to buy.

I started keeping saltwater aquariums when I was around 12-13 years old, and have been since then! Currently I have 5 saltwater tanks, and i'm planning on getting a few more. I'd love to keep a dwarf octopus or two, and i'm likely going to try breeding seahorses and pipefish later on. I'd currently being doing it now if I had the money.

Btw, seahorses aren't hard (well, compared to most sw fish they are), as long as you pick captive bred, quarantine, provide a stable set up with good quality foods, quarantine, and don't mix species or with pipefish. Sadly a lot of people are buying wild seahorses and feeding them only brine shrimp- and that's where a lot of the "horror stories" are coming from.
 
flamingo,

If you want to breed pipes to get some experience, the Atlantic pipes seem to be easier to start with and are reasonably priced (they do have to be separated from their parents immediately). They are not, however, very attractive. They can live easily with Erectus or Dwarves (another good choice to practice trying to raise fry without a huge investment). After several false starts, I am learning that the "learning" part is important before trying the more delicate critters.
 
dwhatley;85510 said:
flamingo,

If you want to breed pipes to get some experience, the Atlantic pipes seem to be easier to start with and are reasonably priced (they do have to be separated from their parents immediately). They are not, however, very attractive. They can live easily with Erectus or Dwarves (another good choice to practice trying to raise fry without a huge investment). After several false starts, I am learning that the "learning" part is important before trying the more delicate critters.

I know, breeding pipefish would probably be my last step. People that breed seahorses regularily have troubles with raising most pipefish fry. Thanks for the advice though!

But on another note, i'd never mix them with dwarves or seahorses :frown:.
 
flamingo;85524 said:
I know, breeding pipefish would probably be my last step. People that breed seahorses regularily have troubles with raising most pipefish fry. Thanks for the advice though!

But on another note, i'd never mix them with dwarves or seahorses :frown:.

This is true of the Indonesian varieties but the Gulf pipes are quite hardy and do not have the delicate nature of the exotics (like some seahorses, their pelagic stage is short). They and do fine with seahorses that come from the same environment (most WC Erectus and dwarves - it IS very helpful to know their origination). Mixing critters that have different exposures and tolerances as well as not quarantining and (in some cases) not pretreating WC animals is often where problems occur. I agree that mixing critters with a heritage of captive breeding should not be mixed with wild caught but this applies to even mixing the same animals as well.
 
I wish we had started with the Erectus ponies. We've had them for almost a year without any issues, in exception of the male having air in his pouch for a couple of weeks which has been several months ago now. He's doing fine ever since. I just hope he's not sterile now.
We went shopping for some new corals right after Christmas and came home to find their tank had sprung a leak about 6 inches from the bottom... it's 2 feet high. Lost 2 of the 3 new corals we picked up, and our Jawfish and Neon Goby I'd had for over a year :frown: Everyone was living in a 5 gallon bucket while the new seal cured, and the Jawfish jumped ship. I think the Neon must have bailed while we were moving rock out of the tank. The ponies did just fine though. Erectus are tough.

We're about to move them to a 60 gallon cube that's pre-drilled. Maybe turn the hex tank into a Jellyfish setup.
 
Animal Mother,
Ouch! I agree, anyone starting with seahorses should begin (and in my case stay ;>) with erectus. The pot bellies are equally as tough (or tougher) but require a chiller and seascaping is minimal.

Let me know if you find out newer info than I did on keeping jellies. Our new public aquarium has a very interesting display and we came home hoping to convert our 30 gal, 4' tall hex into a jellyfish tank. The small amount of info we could find on keeping jellyfish pretty well limited you to getting your own on a regular basis and excessive water change to keep the ones in the tank alive for a short time period. We would still be interested in trying if you happen upon a jelly that lives longer and can live in a small tank.
 

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