Pete Giwojna
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Re:its POOP!!! - 2005/11/05 20:33
Dear LordProcrastinator:
I'm glad to hear that your seahorses arrived in good shape and settled in so quickly, contentedly eating their first meal right away. That's always a good sign!
Yes, please do fish the reddish sack out of your aquarium and dispose of it. My best guess is that it's fecal matter. It's quite a bit larger than normal fecal pellets, and the fecal pellets normally sink rather than float, but it's not unusual for seahorse to be a little constipated and produce a larger than normal fecal mass after their first big meal after fasting for a day or two while in transit. When they are feeding on those red Volcano shrimp (Halocaridina rubra), their feces naturally take on the reddish color of their prey, and when gas is mixed with the fecal matter, it may float.
The seahorse's vent is the cleft formed by the combined openings of the anus and urogenital pore. It is the simple recessed passage located just above (cranial to) the anal fin in females; in males, the anal fin is located in the middle of the vent where it separates the anal opening from the urogenital pore. Three things are thus expelled through the vent: fecal pellets, urine, and gametes (ova or eggs, in the case of females, and spermatozoa, in the case of males).
Feces, eggs, and an undeveloped embryo would all have been expelled from the abdominal area as you describe. The red sack is unlikely to be eggs since the ova are expelled in a long sticky spring and separate into individual ovoids just a few millimeters in diameter almost immediately after being extruded. The red-orange eggs are demersal and sink rather than float. An egg bound female will sometimes release a gelatinous mass of atresic eggs (Tracy Warland, per. comm.), but I don't think that's what you observed. When egg bound, the lower abdomen of the female becomes obviously swollen and they go off their feed.
Stress will sometimes induce premature labor in a gravid male, but in that case, we would expect dozens of underdeveloped embryos attached to yolk sacs to be expelled. The preemies and embryos would float and be about 1 cm in length if they were near full term, but there would be a lot of them and not just one. And if they were far enough along to measure 1 cm in length, you would have no trouble recognizing them as baby seahorses.
At any rate, the red sack that was expelled is nothing you want floating in your aquarium and is nothing to be concerned about. It is most likely fecal matter and the seahorse's fecal pellet should return to normal now that it's feeding routine is back to normal. Your seahorses should be fine and it sounds like the conditions you created for them are very much to their liking.
Yes, unless you specify otherwise, Ocean Rider normally ships male/female pairs. But juveniles and sub-adults are notoriously difficult to sex (the profile of the abdomen and the position of the anal fin are what you key on), so if you have young adults the sexes may be difficult to distinguish at this point, and the brood pouch of mature males only becomes obvious when they are in breeding condition. When your seahorses pair off and begin to court, you should have no trouble telling the males from the females.
Best of luck with your new arrivals, LordProcrastinator!
Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna
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