Dear Martel:
It is very difficult to accurately identify seahorses solely from pictures because you need to key them out according to certain characteristics, such as the number of rings in their exoskeleton, the number of fin rays, and the appearance of their coronet, and it’s impossible to accurately determine the number of tail rings from a photo, much less of the number of fin rays in a seahorse’s dorsal fin or pectoral fins.
But some species can be determined from photographs relatively easily, such as Hippocampus erectus, Hippocampus comes, and Hippocampus reidi, which happen to be some of the most popular ponies kept by home hobbyists. So if you can send me some good, clear photographs of your stallion to the following e-mail address, I will be happy to give you an educated guess as to the identification of your seahorse:
[email protected]
I will keep an eye on my emails and hope to be hearing from you soon with some digital photos for me to examine.
Best wishes with all your fishes, Martel!
Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support