Dear Amanda:
Congratulations on your surprise brood of babies! It’s good to hear that your stallion wasn’t just performing pouch displays or experiencing a Phantom pregnancy, but actually carrying a healthy brood of developing young.
Now that they have begun breeding, I have good news and bad news about your Brazilian seahorses (Hippocampus reidi). The good news is that they are the most prolific of all the seahorses and should now produce a new brood of babies for you every 2-3 weeks. What’s more, they can produce extremely large broods consisting of several hundred newborns. The bad news is that H. reidi babies are especially difficult to raise, as discussed below.
Hippocampus reidi are famous among seahorse keepers for two things: brilliant colors and making babies. The Brazilian breeding machine is the most prolific of all the seahorses (Abbott 2003). They have a well-deserved reputation for churning out brood after brood every two weeks with relentless regularity, and hold the world record for delivering ~1600 young in a single brood (anecdotal reports of broods up to 2000 fry are not uncommon)! Not bad for a livebearer. But with that many fetal fry crammed into one incubator pouch, the inevitable tradeoff is that the young are born at a considerably smaller size than most seahorses (Abbott 2003). They also go through a lengthy pelagic phase, drifting freely with the plankton for up to 1-2 months, which makes H. reidi fry notoriously difficult to raise (Abbott 2003).
The phenomenal output of offspring H. reidi produces is a mixed blessing for hobbyists (Giwojna, Jun. 2002). When combined with the promiscuous nature of captive-bred Brazilians, it means their owners are treated to one of the grandest spectacles in all of nature with delightful regularity — the colorful courtship and love dance of the seahorse (Giwojna, Jun. 2002). Brazilians favor particularly brilliant courtship colors, such as hot pink and tangerine, so the opportunity to observe the unparalleled pageantry and charming choreography of their courtship displays so often is a marvelous bonus for aquarists (Giwojna, Jun. 2002).
On the other hand, the short gestation period combined with those huge broods means that the newborn Brazilian fry are smaller and less well developed than most other seahorses (Giwojna, Jun. 2002). Many of them will be too small to accept newly hatched Artemia nauplii as their first food, and the fry undergo a prolonged pelagic phase, during which they drift freely amidst the plankton for the 1-2 months of their lives (Giwojna, Jun. 2002). The pelagic fry tend to gulp air and cling to the surface, making surface huggers and floaters with buoyancy problems a constant threat (Giwojna, Jun. 2002). Survivorship is typically quite low and the entire brood is often lost. Even accomplished breeders often struggle with this species (Giwojna, Jun. 2002).
Unfortunately, your reidi babies are not suitable for the easy rearing method and require the more complicated "food-chain" method of rearing, as described in the following online article, which will also explain why H. reidi fry are harder to raise than others and discuss how to culture live foods for the fry:
Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Nutrition – Feeding & Rear
http://www.seahorse.com/FAMA_-_Freshwater_and_Marine_Aquarium_magazine/Horse_Forum_-_Nutrition/ Nutrition_-_Feeding_%26_Rearing_the_Fry_-_Part_IV/
In addition, the following threads on this discussion forum are also devoted to raising seahorse babies and should have a lot of information you will find useful in your quest:
Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:I had Babies!! – Ocean
http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,1299/#1299
Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:Babies – Ocean Rider Cl
http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,1316/#1316
Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:suitable Fry Container
http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,863/#863
Be sure to check out the following discussions regarding the best methods for raising H. reidi fry as well:
Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:raising redi – Ocean Ri
http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,1164/#1164
Click here: Seahorse.com – Seahorse, Sea Life, Marine Life, Aquafarm Sales, Feeds and Accessories – Re:reidi fry no survivors
http://www.seahorse.com/option,com_simpleboard/Itemid,/func,view/catid,2/id,1054/#1054
Best of luck with your prolific ponies and all their progeny, Amanda!
Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna
Ocean Rider, Inc. is an Organic Hawaiian-Based Seahorse Aqua-Farm & Aquarium that Follows Strict Good Farming Practices in Raising Seahorses and Other Aquatic Life.
