Seahorse breeding

[DgrMouse]

Awesome.. glad to see I'm not the only one giving it a go anyway, one of my male subelongatus (W.A.'s) popped another 22 out last night... time to start another tank going....

[DgrMouse]

Here is a quick shot of my setup minus 2 more tanks....

[Oldnewbie]

Hi
Yesterday afternoon after i posted here one pair of my seahorses began (i guess) to start breeding ,the male was constantly approaching the female and hitching to her and exposing his pouch and also changing colour,is this breeding behaviour?.This went on until approx 2130hrs when the romance seemed to stop.Will they continue this behaviour over a few days or is that it?Another question if you guys dont mind has anyone bought rotifers from ReefCulture?
Thanx

[DgrMouse]

That behaviour is certainly the normal... it happens at both dusk and dawn. As long as your male isn't ready to give birth, this will continue and certainly is not harmful.

The bucket in the bottom right corner of the pic has a mix of rotifers from ReefCulture and CapnCrash

For feeding the rotifers, I use ReefCulture Rotifer Diet and copepod diet as this mix is rich with both rotifers and copepods now. It's great to help start cycling a new tank without fish (This is what has kicked my new 5 footer into a cycle, dumped about a litre of the rot/pod water along with about 20ml of the rotifer diet algae)

[DgrMouse]

I had a question concerning the setup of an individual tank, so here goes :

The custom tanks with the round insert were custom made using the kriesel design.

How I made them:
Using a standard 40-60 litre tank(LFS), a maxipail 20L bucket(Bunnings), 13mm clear and black poly tubing(Bunnings), Poly tap(Bunnings), Cable ties(Bunnings), Aquarium Silicone(Bunnings), LED light fixture(LFS), Cheap Fish Net(LFS) and a Sicce 0.5 pump (Vebas).

I won't go into too much detail, because there are much better explanations already out there, and all I did was follow one of them. I am almost ready to embark on building another one, so I might to a DIY build for that one if anyone is interested.

The running of the tank:

The pump is regulated by the tap in the clear PVC which runs down into the modified bucket on the trailing edge through a DIY spray bar(partially submerged to stop bubbles). This in turn causes a slow current/flow aroud the round section on the tank. This stops the seahorse fry from sitting on the surface of the water where they have the opportunity to take in air, which ultimately leads to their demise. This flow runs out the other side of the bucket through a hole which has the fish net on it to stop the fry from leaving the bucket. I have some video of this in action, can can't find it right now.. gotta go looking for it.

Having this separation allows easier water changes (Every 2nd day I change approx 50%). I usually leave the lights on abouve the tank for the first 2 weeks, which allows the fry to eat non-stop and igves them the best possible nutrition intake. As for feeding, I am constantly hatching NHBBS and feeding the tanks twice a day, getting rid of any NHBBS that are more than 24 hours old, as they no longer have their yolk sack and have lost alot of their nutirional value to the fry.

Oh, and I found another 38 babies in the tank when I go tup this morning... not sure who they came from though.... gees they can have me guessing some times So now the total is up arounf the 70 mark for this lot.

[DgrMouse]

Kreisel in Action

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[Oldnewbie]

Ok starting to understand your setup now (just takes some of us a bit longer lol) at what stage do you remove the fry from the parents?

[Andre.Gibson]

Please do post the DIY thread for the next one and post the link here
I'm looking to embark on a similar venture for the mandarins to see if there are better results with a kriesel

Keep up the good work DgrMouse. Truely inspirational

Andre

[DgrMouse]

Argh!!! it never rains.. it POURS!!! I woke up this morning to find another 66 babies in the tank... this time from my barbouri male!! I think he is being a bit of a tart as the female barbouri I have for him isn't mature enough to breed yet.... My suspicions are that he mated with a subelongatus... hmm.. crossbreeds

Ok starting to understand your setup now (just takes some of us a bit longer lol) at what stage do you remove the fry from the parents?

I remove the fry from the main tank into the kriesel as soon as they are born, if not, as soon as i wake up and see them swimming on the surface . I usually fill the kriesel with the main tank water as to stop any osmotic or temperature shock. I have found this works well for a better survival rate past the initial 5 day mark. Water changes happen every day if there are more than 100 in the tank, but every 2nd day if not.

Just confirmed with the minister for war and finance that I need another kriesel tank DIY build docco coming up

[Oldnewbie]

Keep the posts coming this is very informative ive been out this morning collecting gear for that setup,lucky the wife is sick and hasnt seen the dollars disapearing......