Re:pony help please

Dear seasons:

You’re very welcome! Good work installing the airstone to increase the amount of dissolved oxygen and drive out more of the dissolved carbon dioxide — that will have a positive effect in the long run.

Yes, that’s correct — if you want your seahorses to look their best and brightest, it’s important to provide them with a good assortment of colorful hitching posts. It’s not unusual for a seahorse to adopt a favorite hitching post as its home base, and they will sometimes than change coloration to match their preferred perch. You can never tell what might catch a seahorse’s eye and trigger a corresponding change in coloration, so including some brightly colored aquarium decor in your seahorse tank was a good thought.

If you read the post at the top of this forum titled "Best Artificial Corals and Hitching Posts for Seahorses?," you will find some suggestions regarding the types of artificial corals and decorations that make good hitching posts and welcome additions to a seahorse tank.

Likewise, if you read through the two-part article on coloration in seahorses that I recently wrote for Conscientious Aquarist online magazine, it will explain how seahorses accomplish their color changes and the sort of factors that can influence coloration in seahorses.. The first article explains how seahorses use their amazing color changing ability, while the second article explains how they accomplish their color changes and is loaded with tips for keeping colorful seahorses such as Sunbursts looking their best and brightest. You can read the articles at the following URL’s and enjoy Leslie Leddo’s magnificent photographs. Just copy the following URL’s and paste them into your web browser, and it will take you directly to the articles:

part one:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_4/V4I1/hippocampus_color/Color_In_Hippocampus.htm

part two:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume_4/V4I2/hippocampus_color2/Color_In_Hippocampus2.htm

Yes, both the males and the females perform the characteristic color changes for their species when courting or conducting their daily greeting ritual (if they have pair bonded). Tropical seahorses typically lighten or brighten coloration when they are courting. For example, dark colored Hippocampus erectus typically turn a silvery white or pale cream color when courting, and may also assume pastel yellow coloration when displaying. They will retain this light coloration for several days throughout the courtship process during initial pair formation, as well as for a short period (10-30 minutes) during their daily greeting ritual thereafter.

This change in coloration is known as "Brightening," and typically involves the seahorse turning much paler or later in coloration, with the exception of the head or face and dorsal surface of the seahorse, which usually remain quite dark. This has the effect of making the seahorse more conspicuous and signals its interest in mating.

So it is normal for your female H. erectus to show the same sort of transitory color changes during courtship or morning greetings. When you get to Lessen 7 in the seahorse training course, which is devoted entirely to courtship and breeding, it includes a detailed discussion of all the courtship rituals seahorses display (complete with illustrations). Completing that lesson will make it easy for you to recognize courtship and mating behavior in your seahorses.

It’s good to hear that your seahorses appear to be eating, albeit reluctantly, but I would still try to obtain some live foods for them to ease their transition into their strange new surroundings. It can sometimes take a week or two for new arrivals to start to feel comfortable in a new aquarium before they resume their normal feeding habits, and you don’t want your new seahorses to lose conditioning in the meantime.

When it comes to training your seahorses to use a feeding station, seasons, the first step is to choose the right place for the feeding trough. There are a few factors to bear in mind when choosing the location for your feeding station.

First of all, it must be in a location that’s convenient for you to reach and observe, since you will be depositing the enriched Mysis in the feeding tray, watching closely to make sure that all your seahorses show up for chow and are feeding normally, with healthy appetites, and then removing any uneaten leftovers when the seahorses have eaten their fill.

Secondly, the feeding station should be located in an area with relatively low flow so that the seahorses can approach it easily, and more importantly, so that brisk currents don’t whisk the frozen Mysis out of the feeding tray or make it too difficult to guide the enriched Mysis into the feeding dish in the first place.

Finally, if the aquarium has a heavy population of bristleworms, micro-hermit crabs, or miniature brittle stars (micro stars), all of which have a liking — perhaps even an addiction — to that gourmet frozen Mysis we provide our seahorses, and they tend to converge on the feeding station at mealtime and steal the Mysis or just generally get in the way, many hobbyists find it useful to elevate their feeding tray in order to keep it out of the reach of such bottom scavengers.

Setting up your feeding station is simply a matter of selecting the type of feeding dish you prefer and setting it in place in the desired location, which should meet all the criteria discussed above. All that remains is to train your seahorses to come to the feeding station and eat, which normally is a ve