They are here… and I’m worried, have questions

Dear Carrie:

It sounds like your Mustangs are suffering lingering effects from shipping stress due to the combined effects from depressed pH and ammonia build up in the shipping water. This can happen during shipping or during the acclimation process, and is fairly common following long-distance shipping, particularly when overnight delivery is not possible, as in your case.
From the symptoms you describe, it appears your pregnant Mustang is still recovering from the toxic effects of ammonia exposure. The most obvious symptoms of ammonia poisoning are a loss of equilibrium, hyperexcitability, increased respiration and oxygen uptake, and increased heart rate. At extreme ammonia levels, fish may experience convulsions, coma, and death. Seahorses exposed to less extreme ammonia levels will struggle to breathe. They will be lethargic and exhibit rapid respiration. They may appear weak and disoriented, periodically detaching from their hitching posts only to sink to the bottom.

That’s what I think has happened to your Mustangs, Carrie — moderate ammonia exposure at a level less than constitutes ammonia poisoning. You mentioned that the pregnant male was sitting on the bottom, breathing heavily. This sounds like the sort of labored breathing, disorientation and loss of equilibrium that results from exposure to high levels of ammonia. The female Mustang also seems to have been affected, albeit to a lesser degree. The male was probably a little more susceptible due to the demands of his pregnancy.

This type of shipping stress and ammonia exposure is completely reversible providing the seahorses weren’t exposed to toxic levels for too long, and the best first aid you can provide for ammonia poisoning is to immediately transfer the seahorses into clean, well-aerated saltwater with zero ammonia and zero nitrite. It sounds like you already accomplished that when you introduced them to their new aquarium, Carrie. All they need now is a quiet, stress-free environment and time to recuperate.

Here’s what I’d like you to do today, Carrie: increase the aeration in your seahorse tank (add and extra airstone if necessary), turn off the aquarium reflector and continue to leave the tank darkened, and give the seahorses as much peace and quiet as possible while your Mustangs recovers. Just provide them with a stress-free environment and leave them alone to recover at their own pace. Add some "feed-and-forget" live food that will survive indefinitely in a marine aquarium until it’s eaten, such as the red feeder shrimp from Hawaii (Halocaridina rubra, a.ka. Volcano shrimp) or live adult brine shrimp, but otherwise don’t pester them.

Then report back to me and update me on their condition tomorrow morning. If provided with good water quality and stress-free conditions, your Mustangs may well show dramatic improvement and perk up considerably overnight. Provided you acclimated them properly and your aquarium has zero ammonia and zero nitrite, they should recovery fully.

If you’re pregnant male is not much improved and is still breathing rapidly (compare his respiration’s to the Sunbursts that seems fine) when you report back to me, we can consider treating him with methylene blue in a hospital tank. Commonly known as "meth blue" or simply "blue," this is a wonderful medication for reversing the toxic effects of ammonia and nitrite poisoning. Methylene blue transports oxygen and aids breathing. It facilitates oxygen transport, helping fish breathe more easily by converting methemoglobin to hemoglobin — the normal oxygen carrying component of fish blood, thus allowing more oxygen to be carried through the bloodstream. This makes it very useful for treating gill infections, low oxygen levels, or anytime your seahorses are breathing rapidly and experiencing respiratory distress. It is the drug of choice for treating hypoxic emergencies of any kind with your fish. However, methylene blue will destroy nitrifying bacteria so it should only be used in a hospital tank (if used in an established aquarium, it will impair the biological filtration and the tank may need to be cycled all over again).

I’m confident none of that will be necessary, however. I’m betting your Mustangs will be good as new in the morning; under these circumstances, they almost always are. So just relax, try not to worry, and keep an eye on them from afar.

Your red feeder shrimp should be fine in the clean 5 gallon plastic bucket, Carrie. A heater is not necessary, but you want to provide them with some aeration. Just set them up as follows:

These fabulous little feeder shrimp can be kept indefinitely in a spare 2-10 gallon tank, or even a clean, plastic bucket, that has been filled with clean saltwater and equipped with an airstone for aeration. Neither a heater nor a fancy filtration system is required. They thrive at room temp and reduced salinity (1.015-1.016), and all they require is an airstone (or a simple air-operated foam filter at most) to keep the water oxygenated, with perhaps a little coral rubble as substrate and a clump or two of macroalgae (sea lettuce, Ogo, Gracilaria) to shelter in. They’re easy to feed — they feed primarily on algal mats and bacteria — but they will accept vegetable-based flake foods and pellets such as various Spirulina products. They are filter feeders and can also be fed with yeast or commercially prepared foods for filter-feeding invertebrates. Many people find an easy way to feed them is to place a small piece of algae-encrusted live rock in their holding tank; once they clean it off, simply replace it with a new piece of algae rock.

Best of luck with your new seahorses, Carrie! Here’s hoping they’re all good as new by next morning.

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna

I know, I’m supposed to be leaving them alone, but I couldn’t help but watch them and notice that the male detatched and sunk, just as you said and is still breathing heavily. Meth blue is one thing that I did not find yet on my list of meds to get, can I get this somewhere other than a fish store? Would the local clinic have some they could give me? Just in case I need to dip him tomorrow, I would like to be ready. But I will leave them be until morning…

Well, this morning there is SOME improvement but the two mustangs still don’t look totally normal. I put some of the shrimp in the tank (no shrimp death, by the way, in my bucket!) and we did see a sunburst eat one. I need to get to work, but I plan to try to come home early, plus my son is home sick and he will watch them and give me a call if they seem to go downhill. I will also call my LFS and see if they have meth blue, but they are a very EMPTY store, so I kind of doubt it. I think the place in Durango probably will, but they are 45 miles away, if necessary I will drive over there after work today. Thanks for all the kind thoughts!

Ok, I was called home by my son for a seahorse emergency… there are 43 baby seahorses in the tank!! I took them out and put them in my hospital tank (filled with seahorse tank water) and I will start the process of hatching baby brine. I was hoping for a lot more time, OMG! The horses all seem fine now and the pregnant male is now cruising along in the tank. The babies are so little! I ordered a brine hatchery yesterday thinking that I had several more week… I’m going to have to improvise something. My LFS does not have baby brine or even copepods, so I’m out of luck there. And I need to get back to work! We own a flooring company and we are sanding the racquetball courts today.

Wowza!

Thanks everyone! It’s a bit overwhelming, I must say!

I moved the babies into a 12 gallon aquapod just about 30 minutes ago, and I had to turn off the filters because the current was just Blowing the babies around the tank like a whirlpool! Not good, but no filteration is not good either…. although, I did put about 13 pounds of live rock in there for the pods and such.

The adults are fine, I need to train them where their feeding station is. The male that gave birth still hasn’t eaten, or at least I haven’t seen him eat. Is this bad?

I tried to take a picture of all the babies, but my camera wouldn’t do it justice. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Dear Carrie:

A 12-gallon aquarium will make a good nursery tank but I’m afraid the way you have it set up is simply not the optimum arrangement for pelagic seahorse fry. Your H. erectus fly will go through an abbreviated pelagic stage or planktonic phase during which they are free swimming and attracted to the light at the surface. They won’t be able to take and manage of the pods and microfauna in the live rock because this pelagic phase lasts anywhere from several days to a week or two and H. erectus before they begin to settle down, orient to the substrate, and adopt hitching posts.

I know it seems a good idea to add live rock to provide some biological filtration along with a source of abundant copepods and amphipods for the newborns, but the combination of daily feedings of baby brine shrimp (Artemia nauplii) combined with live rock is a surefire recipe for growing dense hydroid colonies which will rapidly decimate the fry with their stings. For this reason, it’s best to avoid live rock in your nursery tanks.

The same is true for power filters, Carrie. They are typically counterproductive because they generate too much turbulence for the newborns in addition to very efficiently "eating" all of the newly hatched brine shrimp before the fry get much of a crack at it.

For this reason, and sanitary purposes, most nursery setups are bare bottom tanks that rely on twice daily (minimum) water changes to maintain optimum water quality. Siphoning the bottom at least twice a day is necessary due to the amazingly rapid production of fecal pellets the voracious fry produced, and a bare glass bottom facilitates the vacuuming process. The siphoning removes a small amount of water, which is replaced with freshly prepared saltwater, as discussed below. Simple air-operated sponge filters may be included to provide biological filtration, but that does not eliminate the need to make daily water changes while siphoning up the fecal pellets from the bottom.

Basic Nursery Tank

The simplest nursery tank setup is a bare bottom 5 to 10-gallon glass tank equipped with suitable hitching posts, an air-operated sponge or foam filter, and nothing else (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). Add a cartridge of activated carbon to the airlift tube of the sponge filter(s) to provide a little chemical filtration.

Keep the sponge filters in such nurseries elevated or prop them up off of the bottom. Otherwise they can become death traps for unwary benthic fry, which can become wedged beneath them and trapped. Adjust the airflow through the sponge so it produces a stream of small, steady bubbles. You want to create a slow, gentle flow through the foam filter without generating overly fine or excessively large bubbles (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). Seahorse fry may accidentally ingest fine bubbles, mistaking them for food, while large bubbles can buffet the newborns with harmful results (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). Too much airflow through the sponge filters will leave them prone to "eating" the fry’s food (newly hatched Artemia, copepods, rotifers, etc.).

At the same time, however, you want the air stream to break up surface tension and provide adequate surface agitation. This is important not only for efficient oxygenation and gas exchange at the air/water interface, but also to allow the fry easy access to the surface. A newborn’s first instinct is to head to the surface to fill its swim bladder. (Physosymotous fishes have a connection between their gas bladder and the gut in the form of an open tube called the pneumatic duct, and are thus able to fill the swim bladder by gulping air at the surface. Like many teleost fishes, seahorses lose this connection very early in life, so that their swim bladders are completed closed as adults.) In many species, gulping air is the way in which gas is first introduced into the larvae’s bladder, and if denied an opportunity to do so, their development is hampered due to uninflated swim bladders (Silveira, 2000).

This is the case with seahorse fry. If denied access to the surface to inflate their swim bladders, the fry behave normally while they are small and their weight is still negligible. But over the weeks, as they grow and put on weight, their underdeveloped swim bladders and inability to achieve neutral buoyancy increasingly handicap them. Once they gain a little weight, they sink like rocks. Unable to swim, they are reduced to slithering along the bottom on their bellies and are commonly referred to as sliders. This deficiency does not become apparent until the fry are several weeks old. Needless to say, this hinders their swimming ability and severely limits their feeding opportunities, delaying their growth and development, and rendering entire broods useless. In several cases, the problem was traced back to an oily film on the surface of the nursery tank, which prevented the newborns from filling their swim bladders with air (Silveira, 2000). A protein skimmer will prevent this by removing filmy surface layers and surfactants in general.

The same sort of sponge filters that work well for dwarf seahorse tanks are also ideal for nursery tanks. Be sure to avoid sponge filters with weighted bottoms or other metal components since they will rust when exposed to saltwater. Sooner or later this will cause problems in a marine aquarium (sooner in the small nursery tanks). Select a sponge filter that has no metal parts and is safe for use in saltwater. The proper units will have suction cups to anchor them in place rather than a weighted bottom.

The sponge filters I find that work well are the Oxygen Plus Bio-Filters (models 2, 3, 4, or 5) or the Tetra Brilliant foam filters. They have no metal components, making them completely safe for use in saltwater, and just one of these foam filters will do the job on a tank of 5 gallons or less. They do not have a weighted bottom but are equipped with suction cups instead.

Click here: Foam Aquarium Filters: Oxygen Plus Bio-Filter 2
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?siteid=6&pCatId=3936

Avoid the Oxygen Plus Bio-filter 6, 11, and the Multi sponge, which all have a weighted bottom (metal), that rusts when exposed to saltwater. If you want more filtration, you’re better off going with two of the smaller suction cup sponge filters rather than any of the models with weighted bottoms. For instance, for a 10-gallon tank, I’d suggest using two well-established foam filters, one at either end of the tank for the biofiltration, just as you are planning, Alex.

All you need to operate sponge or foam filters is an inexpensive, diaphragm-operated air pump (whatever is available at a reasonable price from your LFS will do just fine), a length of airline tubing to connect the air pump to the foam filter(s), and a set of air valves (gang valves) to regulate the air flow to the filters. That’s all — nothing to it! The inexpensive Apollo 5 air pumps work great for sponge filters, but whatever air pump you have on hand should certainly do the job.

Cleaning the foam filters is a snap. Simply immerse them in a bucket of saltwater and gently squeeze out the sponge until it’s clean and releases no more sediment or debris. (I use the saltwater I siphoned out of my aquarium when performing a water change for this, and clean my sponge filters whenever I change water.) Run a bottlebrush through the inside of the tube, wipe off the outside of the tube, and you’re done. The filter is ready to go back in the aquarium with no impairment at all of the biofiltration. Takes only a couple minutes.

Setting Up & Maintaining the Nursery.

The nursery tank(s) should be filled with water taken from the main tank that houses their parents, so the delicate newborns can be transferred directly to the nursery without adjusting to any stressful changes in pH, temperature or salinity (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). Cured ”seahorse trees” make good hitching posts, as do artificial aquarium decorations such as small seafans and soft plastic plants with fine, branching leaves (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). Strips, sections, and cylinders of plastic window screen or the plastic mesh sold in craft stores for needlepoint projects also work well. Short lengths of polypropylene rope (the kind sold at hardware stores and marine outlets for boating purposes) are another good option for hitching posts in the nursery. They come in many different colors, can be cut to any desired length, and are buoyant so if one end is anchored and the other end is unraveled, they will wave gently in the current like natural plants. (Avoid nylon rope, however — it bleeds in saltwater and will leech color and who knows what else into your tank!) If necessary, the holdfasts can be secured to the bare glass with silicone aquarium cement or suction cups designed for use in marine aquaria, or secured to a piece of coral rubble to anchor them in place.

If you can obtain the fine-bladed or feathery varieties, live Caulerpa will help maintain good water quality by removing excess nitrates, as well as providing natural hitching posts that help benthic seahorse fry feel right at home (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). These marine plants grow from woody holdfasts and don’t need to be anchored in a sand or gravel substrate, so they’ll do fine in a bare-bottomed nursery (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). However, live Caulerpa is more difficult to keep clean and sanitary, and for this reason, many breeders prefer artificial hitching posts for their nurseries such as those described above (Mai 2004b).

In addition, hydroids and miniature jellyfish (the free-swimming hydromedusae stage of the hydroids) are often present on live marine plants, and they can easily be accidentally introduced to the aquarium along with the Caulerpa. Ordinarily, this is not a problem for the greater seahorses, but hydrozoans can wreak havoc when they become established in a nursery tank. Not only will they compete with the fry for food, their stings can be lethal to the babies or leave them susceptible to secondary infections (Vincent, 1995c), and hydroids are sometimes responsible for mass mortalities in nurseries.

A brief quarantine period for Caulerpa and other marine plants, during which they can be treated with fenbendazole granules for several days, is therefore strongly advised. Fenbendazole is an inexpensive deworming agent used for hoses and other large animals, and treating the quarantine tank with 1/8 teaspoon per 10 gallons is guaranteed to eradicate hydroids before they can gain a foothold in your nursery tank (Liisa Coit, pers. com.).

Good lighting is also essential for the nursery tanks. The fry must be able to see the tiny organisms they live on clearly in order to feed efficiently. Use ”Daylight” fluorescent tubes or the equivalent and leave them on for a minimum of 14-17 hours a day, since the fry need to eat for at least 14 hours everyday (Vincent, 1995c).

Since the nursery tanks have limited filtration, daily water changes are needed in most systems to maintain water quality and keep up with the metabolic wastes and oxygen demands of several dozen baby sea horses and the thousands of brine shrimp needed to feed them (Giwojna, Jan. 1997). When the fry are well fed, defecation is amazingly rapid, with each newborn producing an average of one fecal pellet every 25-30 minutes (Herald and Rakowicz, 1951). The best way to perform the necessary maintenance is to use a length of airline tubing to siphon off the bottom of the nursery tanks a minimum of twice a day (morning and evening are ideal for this; Giwojna, Jan. 1997). Replace the water that was removed while siphoning with freshly mixed saltwater that has been pre-adjusted to the same temperature, pH and salinity as the rearing tank. Change about 10-20% of the water each time you siphon the bottom, so that a total of at least 25-50% of the water in the nursery tanks is exchanged every day (Giwojna, Jan. 1997).

Blacking out the top 2/3 of the aquarium and using side lighting or bottom lighting are techniques that are often used to help keep pelagic seahorse fry away from the surface, but there are many other (and better) nursery tank designs such as kriesels/pseudokreisels and in-tank nurseries that are more efficient at preventing surface huggers and floaters.

If you contact me off list, Carrie, I will be happy to provide you with much more detailed information on rearing H. erectus and the type of nursery tanks that are most suitable for that species (the files are a bit too large to post on a forum such as this). You can reach me at the following e-mail address: [email protected]

In the meantime, there are a number of other articles and discussions regarding rearing seahorse fry on this site that you should find helpful. For example, Mustangs and Sunbursts (Hippocampus erectus) produce offspring that eat newly-hatched Artemia right from birth and are therefore suitable for the "easy" rearing method described in the following article, which also discusses why some seahorse fry are easier to raise than others, and explains how to set up a basic nursery and raise the live foods you need to feed the newborns::

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/&gt;

In addition, the following threads on Ocean Rider Club discussion forum are also devoted to raising seahorse babies and should have a lot of information you will find very useful in that regard:

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

Also, be sure to check out the following discussions regarding the best methods for raising H. reidi fry as well. The methods described for raising H. reidi will work equally well for raising the pelagic Mustang and Sunburst (H. erectus) fry:

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

That should give you a better idea of the sort of preparations you need to make in order to raise newborn seahorses, Carrie.

Gravid males sometimes go off their feed as the big day approaches, but now that your Mustang stallion has delivered his brood, he should have a very healthy appetite again. Now that the weekend is here and you don’t have to be at work, keep a close eye on him and make sure he is eating.

Best of luck with your new seahorses and their progeny, Carrie!

Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna

Ok, I have baby brine this morning! The fish bowl heater worked like a charm, I moved the babies out of the aquapod and into a sterilite container, 2 gallons. Not cute, but it’s bare bottom and should work. Now I’m just waiting for the brine culture to settle so I can feed!