General update 16/8/13
So I thought it was time for a bit of an update.
On July 26th 2013, one of our male seahorses gave birth to 50+ young :) He had been removed to a "breeders net" lined with plankton mesh the night before, and after they were born we moved them across into a plastic container that we've floated in the display ever since!
They've been growing really well on rotifers and baby brine shrimp, and we've been doing 80% (ish) water changes twice daily since the beginning. We've had an air-stone in there since day dot, though in the early days we had it up higher to keep the bubs from spending their time at the surface taking in air. Not sure whether we would do that again in the future, but it didn't work out too badly this time around. Since then, we've reduced the bubble rate so there's a very low flow in there, and given that they're that much older, they're better at swimming through that current and hitching to the provided decorations.
We've lost (what felt like!) quite a few in the first two weeks to air being trapped in their throats, but as they've gotten older, that doesn't seem to be a problem.
We've got approximately 30 left.
First few days:
14/8/13
16/8/13
And then we've also tried our hand at Banded Pipefish again, and have added some more Dragon-faced Pipefish.
The Bandeds were a failure again :( We added two just before the Crawl, and for the first week, there wasn't much to write home about. But then one of them started to eat frozen food with gusto and we were hopeful that this time we'd succeed!! ... But the other one didn't, and it died soon after.
You'd figure that the remaining one would be fine, right? Wrong :( Like what happened to us the first time around, the remaining Banded Pipefish just seem to fade away without company, and despite the success of them eating mysis, the decided to turn their nose up at it and starve themselves to death :( So Banded Pipefish never again.
On to the Dragon-faced Pipefish:
Everything we've read about them indicates that they are social and do well in groups. So given that we only had one remaining in the tank (started with two, but one mysteriously disappeared within the tank never to be seen again), we snagged three more from Williamstown on Saturday 10th August. All looked fit and healthy, so in they went.
Our single one started behaving strangely IMMEDIATELY, and after some close observation, we decided that he was courting <3 Two of the three newbies had pinkish colouration to their snouts and he seems to be following one around like a bad smell, and if the one WITHOUT the pink snout came over, our original one would get between them and try to forcefully steer him away.
The following morning, one had disappeared. Then yesterday, one of the pink snouted ones (the one our "boy" wasn't so interested in) had a VERY swollen snout and was breathing heavily. I was concerned that he/she was being bullied (not that I'd winessed any) and given the swelling, that it could have difficulty eating, so we moved it into our fuge. Haven't seen it since yesterday :(
But, the remaining two are looking good and follow each other everywhere. (The darker, fatter one is our original one)
And that's about it :)
On July 26th 2013, one of our male seahorses gave birth to 50+ young :) He had been removed to a "breeders net" lined with plankton mesh the night before, and after they were born we moved them across into a plastic container that we've floated in the display ever since!
They've been growing really well on rotifers and baby brine shrimp, and we've been doing 80% (ish) water changes twice daily since the beginning. We've had an air-stone in there since day dot, though in the early days we had it up higher to keep the bubs from spending their time at the surface taking in air. Not sure whether we would do that again in the future, but it didn't work out too badly this time around. Since then, we've reduced the bubble rate so there's a very low flow in there, and given that they're that much older, they're better at swimming through that current and hitching to the provided decorations.
We've lost (what felt like!) quite a few in the first two weeks to air being trapped in their throats, but as they've gotten older, that doesn't seem to be a problem.
We've got approximately 30 left.
First few days:
14/8/13
16/8/13
And then we've also tried our hand at Banded Pipefish again, and have added some more Dragon-faced Pipefish.
The Bandeds were a failure again :( We added two just before the Crawl, and for the first week, there wasn't much to write home about. But then one of them started to eat frozen food with gusto and we were hopeful that this time we'd succeed!! ... But the other one didn't, and it died soon after.
You'd figure that the remaining one would be fine, right? Wrong :( Like what happened to us the first time around, the remaining Banded Pipefish just seem to fade away without company, and despite the success of them eating mysis, the decided to turn their nose up at it and starve themselves to death :( So Banded Pipefish never again.
On to the Dragon-faced Pipefish:
Everything we've read about them indicates that they are social and do well in groups. So given that we only had one remaining in the tank (started with two, but one mysteriously disappeared within the tank never to be seen again), we snagged three more from Williamstown on Saturday 10th August. All looked fit and healthy, so in they went.
Our single one started behaving strangely IMMEDIATELY, and after some close observation, we decided that he was courting <3 Two of the three newbies had pinkish colouration to their snouts and he seems to be following one around like a bad smell, and if the one WITHOUT the pink snout came over, our original one would get between them and try to forcefully steer him away.
The following morning, one had disappeared. Then yesterday, one of the pink snouted ones (the one our "boy" wasn't so interested in) had a VERY swollen snout and was breathing heavily. I was concerned that he/she was being bullied (not that I'd winessed any) and given the swelling, that it could have difficulty eating, so we moved it into our fuge. Haven't seen it since yesterday :(
But, the remaining two are looking good and follow each other everywhere. (The darker, fatter one is our original one)
And that's about it :)
