I'm in the process of weaning the babies onto mysis, which will eventually become the staple of their diet. At the moment they are all eating Cyclop-eeze and have been for some time but have shown little interest in mysis itself.
Yesterday I tried them with shaved garlic soaked brine shrimp, and although there was a lot of interest only one of them ate it with gusto. So, this is my challenge over the next week or so; to get them all eating frozen brine shrimp. Usually, once one starts eating the others follow shortly behind, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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| Feeding Time |
The great thing about them now is that they are all starting to really interact with eachother and play. Often you will see them all holding tails whilst chasing after food, and usually it seems to be a race as to who's going to get there first. At feeding time there can become quite a tangle of seahorses.
The other lovely thing is that I'm starting to see changes in colour, we have one which is permanently orange but quite a few have flashes of orange on them. The other thing, which I love, is cirri. These are filaments that form over the body of the seahorse giving them an appearance of having a crazy wild hairdo. This is a picture of the babies mother when I first got her.
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| Lily |
Most people believe that this phenomenon is a form of camouflage but nobody seems to know why seahorses get it, or more to the point, why some do and some don't. There also doesn't seem to be any surefire way of influencing cirri. In my experience, most seahorses that have had cirri will lose it when put into a display tank.
