Re:Seahorse Breathing Question - 2008/06/06 05:05So is the shaginess like a ressecive trait. If I can't get another specimen of the same species will she breed or pair up with another male. Or will she have to see some shag? What species should I get for her to try to pair up with? Thanks Grant
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The presence of cirri is certainly not a dominant trait in most seahorse species, but I don't know if it conforms to the classic laws of Mendelian genetics and is a simple recessive trait that can be inherited from the parents if both of them carry the gene and pass it on, or not, sir. But I suspect it is quite a bit more complicated than that.
For example, the development of cirri often seems to have more to do with the environment than with genetics. Many researchers assume that the cirri are simply epidermal projections that grow in response to external stimuli for the purpose of camouflage (Todd Gardner, pers. com.). Some of the habitat features that are believed to promote the growth of cirri are a weedy environment and fast water flow. I suspect that in order to develop cirri a seahorse must have both a genetic predisposition for the trait and the right environment to stimulate the development of the dermal appendages.
Lucy Woodall has been researching the population genetics of H. guttulatus and H. hippocampus, and has observed elaborate cirri in both species, but thus far has not found any genetic correlation for the trait. However, it is interesting to note that the branching of the cirri is different in specimens of H. guttulatus as opposed to specimens of H. hippocampus (Woodall, pers. com.).
Further confounding the matter is the fact that cirri are often a transitory trait. Most seahorses that possess them lose the cirri over a period of weeks or months as they grow. Cirri are thus seen much more often on juvenile seahorses and are fairly rare on adult seahorses of the species.
Be that as it may, I can assure you that shaggy seahorses with the elaborate cirri will mate readily with seahorses of the same species that lack cirri altogether, and vice versa. So you don't necessarily need to find another shaggy seahorse to pair with your female, Grant.
In home hobby tanks, where different species of seahorses are often mixed freely, crossbreeding or interspecific hybridization does occasionally occur, but it is quite uncommon, especially when seahorses have potential partners of their own species available to them. The prolonged, elaborate courtship ritual that seahorses go through before mating occurs generally prevents seahorses from different species from breeding successfully. Suffice it to say that seahorses are much, much better at species recognition than we are, and that given a choice, they almost always prefer to mate with their own kind. Almost always.
However, the urge to reproduce is very strong in seahorses. For example, solitary males often go through the motions of courtship when there are no other seahorses present in their aquarium. They may court their own reflection and sometimes even direct their courtship displays toward their keepers. Dwarf seahorse stallions in particular are irrepressible in that regard, and a hitching post may suffice for them as a surrogate, when no better alternative is available! Homosexual mating attempts (both male and female) are also common when no member of the opposite sex is present. (Fielder reported a case where two male Hippocampus hippocampus courted one another for over two hours and unsuccessfully attempted at least 20 copulatory rises together.)
Now, where a male and female seahorse of different species are confined together, they most often simply ignore one other when it comes to breeding. But other times the instinct to breed overwhelms any interspecific inhibitions, and with no other available partner, the male will attempt to flirt with the female regardless of their differences. Results vary when this occurs, but the resulting offspring are generally perfectly viable.
In your case, Grant, I would suggest pairing your seahorse with an H. erectus stallion. The body build and profile of your seahorse most closely resembles H. erectus, and that is a species that occasionally develops extravagant cirri. It's possible that your female may be H. erectus or that, if she is not, she may accept an erectus stallion as a mate.
At this point, I would also like to say that you have a very attractive mini reef flourishing in your Biocube. That's a very colorful, natural setting for your seahorse and she certainly appears to be happy in her little patch of Paradise.
However, when keeping seahorses in an appropriately elaborate environment such as your nano reef, it is imperative that you feed them properly! Domesticated seahorses thrive on enriched frozen Mysis as their staple, everyday diet. But the worst thing you can do when feeding the seahorses in a intricate reef or live rock environment is to scatter a handful of frozen Mysis throughout the tank to be dispersed by the currents and hope that the hungry horses can track it all down. Inevitably some of the frozen food will be swept away and lodge in isolated nooks and crannies where the seahorses cannot get it (Giwojna, 2005). There it will begin to decompose and degrade the water quality, which is why ammonia spikes are common after a heavy feeding. Or it may be wafted out into the open again later on and eaten after it has begun to spoil. Either outcome can have dire consequences (Giwojna, 2005).
The best way to avoid such problems is to target feed your seahorses or set up a feeding station for them. See my online article in Conscientious Aquarist for a detailed discussion explaining exactly how to set up a feeding station and train your seahorses to use it:
Personally, I prefer to target feed my seahorses instead. The individual personalities of seahorses naturally extend to their feeding habits. Some are aggressive feeders that will boldly snatch food from your fingers, while some are shy and secretive, feeding only when they think they're not being observed. Some like to slurp up Mysis while it's swirling through the water column, and some will only take Mysis off the bottom of the tank. Some are voracious pigs that greedily scarf up everything in sight, and some are slow, deliberate feeders that painstakingly examine every morsel of Mysis before they accept or reject it. Some eat like horses and some eat like birds. So how does the seahorse keeper make sure all his charges are getting enough to eat at mealtime? How does the hobbyist keep the aggressive eaters from gobbling up all the mouth-watering Mysis before the slower feeders get their fair share? And how can you keep active fishes and inverts with seahorses without the faster fishes gobbling up all the goodies before the slowpoke seahorses can grab a mouthful (Giwojna, unpublished)?
Target feeding is the answer. Target feeding just means offering a single piece of Mysis to one particular seahorse, and then watching to see whether or not the 'horse you targeted actually eats the shrimp. Feeding each of your seahorses in turn that way makes it easy to keep track of exactly how much each of your specimens is eating (Giwojna, unpublished).
There are many different ways to target feed seahorses. Most methods involve using a long utensil of some sort to wave the Mysis temptingly in front of the chosen seahorse; once you're sure this has attracted his interest, the Mysis is released so it drifts down enticingly right before the seahorse's snout. Most of the time, the seahorse will snatch it up as it drifts by or snap it up as soon as it hits the bottom (Giwojna, unpublished).
A great number of utensils work well for target feeding. I've seen hobbyists use everything from chopsticks to extra long tweezers and hemostats or forceps to homemade pipettes fashioned from a length of rigid plastic tubing. As for myself, I prefer handfeeding when I target feed a particular seahorse (Giwojna, unpublished).
But no doubt the all-time favorite implement for target feeding seahorses is the old-fashioned turkey baster. The old-fashioned ones with the glass barrels work best because the seahorses can see the Mysis inside the baster all the way as it moves down the barrel and out the tip. By exerting just the right amount of pressure on the bulb, great precision is possible when target feeding with a turkey baster. By squeezing and releasing the bulb ever so slightly, a skillful target feeder can keep a piece of Mysis dancing at the very tip of the baster indefinitely, and hold the tempting morsel right in front of the seahorse's mouth as long as necessary. Or if the seahorse rejects the Mysis the first time it drifts by, a baster makes it easy to deftly suck up the shrimp from the bottom so it can be offered to the target again. In the same way, the baster makes it a simple matter to clean any remaining leftovers after a feeding session (Giwojna, unpublished). (You'll quickly discover the feeding tube is also indispensable for tapping away pesky fish and invertebrates that threaten to steal the tempting tidbit before an indecisive seahorse can snatch it up.)
In short, target feeding allows the hobbyist to assure that each of his seahorses gets enough to eat without overfeeding or underfeeding the tank. And it makes it possible to keep seahorses in a community tank with more active fishes that would ordinarily out-compete them for food, since the aquarist can personally deliver each mouthful to the seahorses while keeping more aggressive specimens at bay (Giwojna, unpublished).
The key to keeping active specimens like firefish and occelaris clownfish or cleaner shrimp successfully with seahorses is to feed the other fish and inverts with standard, off-the-shelf aquarium foods first, and once they've had their fill, then target feed the seahorses (Giwojna, unpublished).
Best of luck finding a mate for your female, Grant!
Respectfully, Pete Giwojna
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BigGrantman
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Re:Seahorse Breathing Question - 2008/06/07 04:24Those were very good points about the feeding. I use to have two other seahorses that i trained to eat at a feeding station but target feeding sounds more fun. also right now i have been training her to eat frozen food, she is doing suprisingly well too. She is now mostly eating frozen but not as quickly or vigouriously as live. I know when it comes to breeding :clownfish and angelfish are harder to get breeding than livebearers, so what are seahorses like? Also the tank has a large cleaning crew so how many seahorses could i have? I was thinking four would be pushing it. Could I do two males and her or what? also do you think the tank will flourish for a while or start getting worse as time goes on? my main reef tank has sps and the seahorse tank is mainly for mushrooms and polyps. was it wrong to set the tank up like that? also can i just let the babies stay in the biocube or should i setup a "baby tank"? could i put them in my refugium? thanks for your help? I forgot she is a female right? Grant
Post edited by: BigGrantman, at: 2008/06/07 04:49
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It's good to hear that your new female is making the transition to frozen foods so well.
Can you refresh my memory regarding the size of your Biocube, sir? Is your setup a 12-gallon nano tank, a 24-gallon Biocube, or what? I need to know how big your Biocube is in order to give you a good answer regarding the proper stocking density for the tank.
But offhand I would say that adding any more than one new seahorse would probably be pushing things, considering the amount of invertebrates that are already in the tank.
Yes, sir, you are quite correct in assuming that seahorses will breed more readily in a small, closed-system aquarium than clownfish or angelfish will. However, reproductive success with seahorses often depends largely on whether they are wild-caught specimens or cultured seahorses. Allow me to elaborate.
Environmental triggers, such as changes in salinity, and other seasonal changes often have a strong influence on breeding in the aquarium, particularly for wild seahorses. Wild-caught seahorses may have a difficult time adjusting to captive conditions, don't tolerate crowding at all, and most importantly of all, in the aquarium they lack the type of seasonal or cyclical environmental cues (falling water temperature, changes in day length, reduced salinity from monsoon rains, moon phases and high tides, etc.) they normally experience in the wild that regulate the breeding season. These environmental stimuli trigger the secretion of gonadotropin and other key hormones that prepare them for breeding and govern their reproductive activity. Without these environmental cues and the hormonally induced changes they trigger, many times wild-caught seahorses simply do not breed in captivity. (For instance, studies by fish endocrinologists show that it takes at least two years for wild fish just to adjust to a reverse photoperiod in the aquarium if they are from the southern seas and are now being kept in the northern hemisphere.)
The point is that breeding may not occur without the proper environmental stimuli to trigger the secretion of pituitary hormones. This often presents a problem in the aquarium, especially for wild-caught seahorses. Artificial lighting eliminates daylight as a cue, heaters prevent temperature fluctuations, and hobbyists take pains to keep the salinity rock solid. Such stability in aquarium conditions is generally a good thing -- the goal that all conscientious aquarists are taught to strive for, but it is not necessarily the best thing to promote breeding (Indiviglio, 2002). With no seasonal changes in day length, water temperature, or salinity to trigger a surge in gonadotropin and get the ball rolling, reproductive activity in wild-caught seahorses can grind to halt. This problem was often exasperated in the past by the fact that hobbyists often kept wild ponies in aquariums that were too shallow for them to mate successfully.
In short, breeding in Hippocampus is often seasonal, regulated by cyclical changes in water temperature, day length, and salinity (monsoons). In the wild, both temperate and tropical seahorses breed best during the summer months and typically take a break from breeding during the offseason. Although domesticated seahorses that have been born and bred for aquarium life for generation after generation are no longer as strongly dependent on such environmental cues and will often breed year-round in captivity, even captive-bred seahorses sometimes experience a lull in the festivities at this time of year. That's just their natural breeding cycle, the rhythm of life built into their genes.
Breeding is another area where wild seahorses simply cannot compete with their captive-bred counterparts. In the olden days, greater seahorses removed from the wild rarely bred in captivity. There were a number of reasons for this ranging from traumatic capture techniques and mishandling by dealers to difficulty adjusting to a captive environment to the sort of feeding problems we’ve been discussing above. But one big factor was that in the aquarium they lacked the type of seasonal or cyclical environmental cues (falling water temperature, changes in day length, reduced salinity from monsoon rains, moon phases and high tides, etc.) they normally experience in the wild that regulate the breeding season. These environmental stimuli trigger the secretion of gonadotropin and other key hormones that prepare them for breeding and govern their reproductive activity. Without these environmental cues and the hormonally induced changes they trigger, many times they simply ceased to breed in captivity. Researchers dealt with such setbacks through wild procurement of gravid males. In other words, loaded or pregnant males removed from the wild provided the fry needed for rearing projects and laboratory study in those days. Those were truly the Dark Ages of seahorse keeping.
Nowadays, captive-bred seahorses normally experience no such difficulties in the boudoir. They are highly domesticated and very well adapted to the aquarium environment. Unlike wild seahorses, they are not subject to traumatic capture methods or mishandling and abuse en route to the hobbyist. Born and bred for captivity generation after generation, for them the aquarium is their natural habitat. As a result, for the most part, they have lost their dependence on seasonal cues and external stimuli when it comes to mating. Rather than external environmental cues, for farm-raised seahorses, which have been raised at far greater population densities than seahorses ever experience in the wild, it is the presence of other seahorses -- potential mates -- that appears to get their hormones flowing and triggers courtship. (Pheromones or sex hormones almost certainly play a role in this.) In other words, living amidst a group of potential partners at all times seems to be what turns on captive-bred seahorses, and breeding appears to be their number one mission in life. Compared to their wild conspecifics, farm-raised seahorses seem to court constantly, breed like bunnies, and change partners often.
In fact,nowadays, the primary concern of many new seahorse keepers who are not prepared for rearing the young is how to prevent their prolific CB ponies from settling down and breeding. Some aquarists will keep their seahorses in a unisex environment in order to avoid breeding so they don't have to deal with brood after brood of young.
If you have a compatible pair of captive bred and raised seahorses and you provide them with optimum water quality, good nutrition, and the stress-free environment, the chances are excellent that they will produce offspring at some point, Grant.
No, sir, the newborn seahorses cannot be kept in your Biocube or in a refugium. Either of those options would rapidly result in an aquarium that was being overrun by hydroids, which would quickly get out of hand when you began adding copious amounts of newly hatched brine shrimp to your nano reef or refugium on a daily basis in order to feed to seahorse fry. And the dreaded hydroids would then quickly take a grievous toll on the newborns.
Realistically, you would need to set up separate nursery and rearing tanks to have any kind of chance at raising the seahorse fry. When that time comes, I would be happy to help you set up suitable nurseries for the newborns.
Yes, sir -- you did it right when you set up your mini reef using primarily mushrooms and polyps, while avoiding SPS corals and LPS corals. Soft corals have very little stinging ability and generally make good choices for a modified mini reef that will include seahorses (Delbeek, Oct. 2001). This includes most mushroom anemones (corallimorpharians). However, as Charles Delbeek cautions, "One notable exception is the elephant ear mushroom anemone (Amplexidiscus fenestrafer). This animal is an active feeder on small fish and will envelope them whole with its mantle then slowly digest them by extruding its digestive filaments into the space created. No small fish are safe with these animals in the tank (Delbeek, Oct. 2001).".
Hippocampus also does very well with zooanthids and colonial polyps in general. But the hobbyist must be sure to observe a couple of precautions when handling the zoanthids and placing them in your aquarium.
First and foremost, many of the commonly available Zooanthus (button polyps) and Palythoa (sea mats) species contain a very toxic substance in their mucous coat known as palytoxin, which is one of the most poisonous marine toxins ever discovered (Fatherree, 2004). Palytoxin can affect the heart, muscles, and nerves, resulting in paralysis or possibly even death, and many hobbyists have reported numbness, nausea and/or hallucinations after merely touching these corals (Fatherree, 2004). When you handle zoanthids and palythoans, you cannot help picking up some of their protective slime on your fingers, and so much as rubbing your eye, picking your nose, or a small cut on your finger can be enough to land you in the hospital. When handling Zooanthus are Palythoa species, it's very important to wear disposable latex gloves, avoid touching your mouth or eyes, and carefully dispose of the gloves immediately afterwards (Fatherree, 2004).
Secondly, zoanthids and other soft corals such as mushrooms may wage border battles if you place them in close proximity to each other (and the zoanthids almost always lose out to the mushrooms in these skirmishes). So be sure to allow adequate space between the colonies. Some rapidly growing Zooanthus colonies can be aggressive to soft and stony corals alike as they rapidly spread over the rockwork, but in general they are quite peaceful, and you can always slow down their rate of growth by reducing the nutrient loading in the aquarium.
Other low light corals that should be suitable for a seahorse reef include genera such as Cynarina, Scolymia and Trachyphyllia, as well as non-photosynthetic gorgonians such as Subergorgia and Didogorgia, and perhaps wire corals such as Cirripathes spp. (Delbeek, Nov. 2001).. However, supplemental feedings of zooplankton may be required to maintain these corals in good health.
The hard or stony corals fall into two categories depending on the size of their polyps. The small polyped stony (SPS) corals have tiny polyps that extend out of minute openings in the stony skeleton, and generally have weak stings that should not pose a threat to seahorses. Depending on conditions in the tank, SPS corals such as Acropora, Montipora, Pocillipora, Porities, Seriatopora and Stylophora can be tried freely at your discretion (Delbeek, Oct. 2001).
The large polyped stony (LPS) corals, however, are generally best avoided altogether. These include genera such as Catalaphyllia, Cynarina, Euphyllia and Trachyphyllia that have large fleshy polyps which often have tentacles equipped with powerful stinging cells. The Euphyllia and Catalaphyllia have the most powerful nematocysts among the LPS corals, and can deliver stings that are stronger than most anemones (Delbeek, Oct. 2001).
Some of the soft corals and stony corals that generally do well with seahorses in a modified reef tank are listed below. (By no means is this intended to be a comprehensive list, but rather just a few examples of suitable corals to serve as general guidelines when stocking a reef tank that will house seahorses):
Finger Leather Coral (Lobophyton sp.) Flower Tree Coral - Red / Orange, (Scleronephthya spp.) aka: Scleronephthya Strawberry Coral, or Pink or Orange Cauliflower Coral Christmas Tree Coral (Sphaerella spp.) aka: the Medusa Coral, Snake Locks Coral, or French Tickler Cauliflower Colt Coral (Cladiella sp.) aka: Colt Coral, Soft Finger Leather Coral, Seaman's Hands or Blushing Coral. Toadstool Mushroom Leather Coral (Sarcophyton sp.) aka: Sarcophyton Coral, Mushroom, Leather, or Trough Corals. Bullseye Mushroom Coral (Rhodactis inchoata) aka: Tonga Blue Mushroom, Small Elephant Ear Mushroom (rarely) Clove Polyps (Clavularia sp.) Stick Polyp (Parazoanthus swiftii) Green Daisy Polyps (Clavularia sp.), Indonesia Orange & Green Colony Button Polyps (Zooanthus sp.), Fiji Pulsing Corals (Xenia spp.) Red Ricordea (Ricordea sp.), Indonesia, occasionally Solomon Islands Lavender Hairy Mushroom (Actinodiscus sp.), Tonga Pimpled Mushroom (Discosoma sp.), Indonesia Purple Gorgonians
For additional information regarding seahorse-safe corals and invertebrates, please see Will Wooten's guide to tankmates for seahorses at the following URL:
Best wishes with all your fishes (and invertebrates), Grant!
Respectfully, Pete Giwojna
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BigGrantman
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Re:Seahorse Breathing Question - 2008/06/08 02:58I didn't remember reading about if she really was a female. I just need to know when searching for a mate. Also the biocube is a 12 gallon.
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Yes, sir -- you identified your seahorse as a female in your initial post, and the seahorse in the photograph shows no hint of a pouch whatsoever. Either the pony is a female or it is a juvenile that has not yet reached sexual maturity.
Yikes, Grant -- if your nano reef is a 12-gallon aquarium, that's going to be problematic for anything but the tiniest seahorses. As we have discussed many times on this forum, unless you will be keeping one of the miniature breeds of farm-raised seahorses, such as Hippocampus zosterae, H. breviceps, or H. tuberculatus, it's best to start with the largest aquarium you can reasonably afford and maintain (the taller, the better). In general, a tank of at least 40 gallons (150 L) is preferable if you're an inexperienced aquarist since that's the size when one begins to see significant benefits in terms of the greater stability a larger volume of water can provide. An aquarium of 40-gallons or more will be more resistant to overcrowding and to rapid fluctuations in temperature, pH, and salinity than smaller setups. The larger the aquarium the larger the margin for error it offers the aquarist and the greater the benefits it provides in terms of stability.
It is equally desirable to select an aquarium at least 20-inches high when keeping the greater seahorses. They need the vertical swimming space to perform their complex mating ritual and successfully complete the egg transfer, which is accomplished while the pair is rising through the water column or drifting slowly downwards from the apex of their rise. If the aquarium is too shallow, eggs will be spilled during the transfer from the female to the male's brood pouch, and mating becomes increasingly difficult or impossible below a certain minimum depth. A tall aquarium can also help protect the seahorses from depth-related health problems such as bloated pouch and certain forms of Gas Bubble Syndrome.
Under the circumstances, you should not consider adding any Hippocampus erectus to your 12-gallon mini reef. It's too small to sustain any of the larger breeds of seahorses long-term, and its lack of water depth will leave them predisposed to gas bubble syndrome, which is a fatal condition if left untreated. Adding so much as one more seahorse to the tank would be inadvisable, and your fancy female may be at risk in a tank that size as it is.
It's unlikely that your seahorses will be able to reproduce in a 12-gallon tank because it is probably too shallow for any of the larger seahorse species to complete the copulatory rise. The shallower the tank, the more difficult coitus is to achieve and the more likely it becomes that eggs will be spilled during the transfer. Eventually this reaches the point where entire clutches are being lost, which is when most pairs cease trying and no longer attempt to breed.
Worse still, shallow tanks increase the danger that an overripe female may become egg bound. In a tank with inadequate water depth, a courting female that has hydrated her clutch may be unable to make the egg transfer, yet she will be reluctant to dump the eggs while a receptive male is still standing by eager to receive them. If she is retains her clutch too long, hoping to pull off the tricky egg transfer despite the lack of depth, she may become egg bound. Her lower abdomen will become very swollen and prolapsed tissue may protrude through the vent as the pressure builds up. If she is unable to release the eggs at this point and relieve the pressure, death will result. An egg-bound female is thus a very serious complication of depth limitations (Leslie Leddo, pers. com.). So you should reconsider trying to find a mate for your female.
The smallest aquarium that would be suitable for a single pair of Hippocampus erectus would be a 20 gallon Extra-High All-Glass Aquarium (20"L x 10"W x 24"H), and a somewhat larger aquarium would really be preferable. If you're using a 24-gallon Biocube, you could consider keeping a pair of seahorses. But it would be better to stick with invertebrates for your 12-gallon Biocube and then to upgrade to a larger aquarium if you would like to set up a seahorse tank, sir.
Happy Trails! Pete Giwojna
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