Wednesday 24 August 2011

Weaning

9 Weeks old
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.

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.

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.




Sunday 7 August 2011

The H.erectus fry are now 7 weeks old

I can't deny that this batch has been a bit of a struggle, what with the temperatures being so unpredictable and the fact that I've got my adults in a temporary tank at the moment but they seem to be stabilizing and doing quite well now.  They've gone through a bit of a growth spurt over the last few weeks and are starting to play in the current.

I'm struggling to get any good pictures and these are the best that I could get.  I really will invest in a good macro lens one of these days!





Today was 100% water change which is now great fun as they are too big to use a hose to transfer them from one tank to another so it now means transferring them one by one by hand!

The Dwarfs

The  dwarfs are doing great and multiplying rapidly!  I think we now have around 20, but I honestly struggle to count them.  One thing I do know is that daddy is pregnant again!  Seriously, that saying "breed like rabbits" needs to change to "breed like seahorses".  Rabbits have nothing on seahorses!!!

Anyway, more bad pics follow!  There aren't many as the dwarfs are even harder to get pictures of than the erectus - but then the adults are about the size of the 7 week old erectus so I do have a good excuse!



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