Day out at London Sea Life

Well, Ron and I had planned to meet up with my parents and two nephews today so we decided to treat them to a visit to the London Sea Life centre.

A word of warning - if you decide to visit this, or probably any other London attraction on a school holiday weekend, be sure to take snacks, water, a fold-up seat and be prepared to queue!

I should have known better, and although I expected to have to queue a little I really didn't expect it to be like queuing for the most popular ride at Disneyland!  So, an hour and a half later we finally made it to the front of the queue and made our purchase, 4 adults and 2 children.  Even with the 2 for 1 vouchers that I got, I had to steady myself with one hand on the counter when I was told the price!  I guess, I'd forgotten how much everything costs since moving out of London.

We walked around the freshwater exhibits, and saw some freshwater pipefish, although I'm not sure what species they were as I couldn't see an information sign.  

They kind of look  like alligator's, but if that's the case they were in the wrong section!

We then walked around to the touch pool where they had a number of starfish in a little rock pool type thing and where people were encouraged to put their hands in the water and touch them.  In the space of just a few minutes at least 10 different pairs of hands must have been in that water.  Sadly, the sink by the side of the touch pool was out of order and so no one was washing their hands before taking the plunge.  I wonder how safe that is for the animals?

By this time, we had been walking around the exhibition for around 15 minutes and  just before going through the Ocean tunnel (leading to the seahorses) we stopped so that we could sign the Save the Shark petition, and my youngest nephew, Ciaran, could draw a picture of a round, yellow shark!!  Just as we were about to head through the tunnel the fire alarm sounded and we were all evacuated. NOooooo!  Thus, my mission was ruined

On the way out we managed to share a few moments with a rather friendly ray who wanted to say hello!  How sweet!

I have to say that I am so proud of my little nephews who are only 5 and 7 as they refrained from putting their hands in the water when the opportunity arose.  The youngest one pointed out to me why it wasn't good for the fish :)

Regardless of not being able to see the seahorses, we still had a fun day! 

Tiny, tiny dwarf seahorses

Earlier this week there was a TV program about seahorses on Nat Geo.  It was a documentary by Project Seahorse and among other species they were also researching dwarf seahorses.  One of the ladies had a dwarf seahorse in her hand and I thought that it gave perfect representation of just how tiny these little guys are.  So, I thought I would pinch their idea and took a photo of one of my juvi's whilst doing a water change.

This little gal is probably about 6 months old.  She's not fully grown yet, but not far off it.  She's as good as adult size now.

Tiny, isn't she!

Another thing that I have been doing this week is sorting out the fry tanks.  We have a new set up now which allows me to have up to 6 fry tanks in a relatively small area.  At the moment, I just have 2 fry tank, a hospital tank, and a number of culture containers.

Playtime!

Whilst cleaning the big fry tank yesterday I couldn't help but notice that they appeared to be queuing up to play in the bubbles from the airline.  Its quite funny because they just sit directly in the flow and seem to get blown about quite a bit.....crazy little animals!

Splitting the brood

Well, we have a few of the 15 week old babies that are now really starting to show growth spurts that are leaps and bounds ahead of the rest and as we lost one of the smaller babies this week it seems that now is the time to split them.

I now have 2 tanks for the 15 week olds.  The tank with the biggest babies in it will only get frozen food now, and the smaller babies tank will continue to get live brine as well as the frozen.  I want to give them every opportunity to grow as big as their brothers without having to compete with them for the food.

The bigger babies are really hard to get a good picture of now because they are constantly on the move!  The orange one loves to play in the current and is constantly swimming back and forth in the flow!

There he goes again!  Sorry for the blurry picture...

20th September

Its amazing to me how much the new babies seem to have grown.  There are only 5 of them left out of the original 7 that we saved but these guys seem to be growing quickly.  They're only a little over 2 weeks old, but they seem to be much bigger than the others have been at the same age.  In actual fact, I've moved one of the smaller ones from the 13 week olds in with these little guys and to be honest, there's not a huge difference in size!

I'm regularly adding frozen food in the tank as I think these guys are going to be early starters, and whilst I haven't actually seen any of them eating the frozen, I have witnessed the bright orange bellies that the Cyclopeeze produce.  I think also, that having one of their older brother/sisters in who is already eating frozen will help a great deal.

Talking of the older babies, they're also doing great.  Sometimes its hard to appreciate how much they are growing when you watch them every day but there's definitely one or two of them in there that are starting to stand out from the crowd.  When I did the 100% water change a couple of days ago I added all orange plants to the tank and this seems to be encouraging some of them to colour up.  Whereas before we only had one orange one and the rest were all black, we now have a good few that are starting to change colour.

And of course the cirri continues to grow.  I'm a real sucker for the babies with cirri.

This one has particularly crazy cirri!

Erectus Fry at 12 Weeks

They're now 12 weeks old and doing great.  We have just one that has turned orange and the others at the moment are staying black, although they are starting to develop their saddle pattern.

Quite a few more are developing cirri, and looking quite wild!

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.

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!

Babies! Babies! Babies!

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog somewhat, and yet this isn't because nothing has changed but more just because I've been quite lazy!

To get me back into the swing of things I've had a redesign, which I think makes Seahorse Adventures look much more welcoming.

So, what's been going on in the weeks since I last posted?  Well, as the title says I've pretty much got babies (of the aquatic kind) coming out of my ears at the moment.  On top of this, my display tank (DT) is falling apart and so I've moved all of my adults into a temporary home while I prepare for a new tank which I will talk about in my New Tank pages.

Seahorse Fry


The latest brood of H.erectus is the result of a pairing between Ed and Cow, which I'm a little disappointed with as I had hoped that he would continue to pair with Lily.  I had been hoping that one of my grown up babies, Dizzy, would pair up with Cow.  The get together between Ed and Cow did happen whilst Lily was out of the tank so, I'm optimistic that Ed will go back with Lily now that they are back together - although the flirting with Cow does continue!  It has to be said that he is a bit of a cad and will flirt with anything that swims!

The babies, are 3 weeks old today, at least a proportion of them are.  Ed's labour lasted 5 days with most babies being born on day 1 and day 4 so for arguments sake, they are three weeks old today.

I have lost a significant number of babies and put this down to two things. 1. I tried a new method in the first couple of weeks which didn't work for me. 2. The weather got the better of me on a couple of days when I just didn't appreciate how warm the tanks had got.

I painstakingly counted the babies by hand on Friday when I did the last 100% water change and had 115.

Method

The babies are in an 8 gallon rectangular tank, with a filter and two airlines placed at opposite corners of the tank.  Each time that I do a 100% water change I add some Fluid Filter, and tetra phyto.  Formalin has also been added on days 1, 3 and 5, then as and when required.

The fry are fed with enriched baby brine shrimp between 4 and 5 times a day.  Frozen food will be added to the tank this week to try and entice them to start taking frozen food as soon as possible.  I will add cyclopeeze and shaved mysis.

I really should stick to this method as its what has worked best for me in the past.

Here's some pics that I took yesterday.

H.Zosterae

Since my last post we have also had quite a few dwarf seahorse (H.zosterae) babies born.  The wonderful thing about the dwarfs is that they feed on the same food as the adults, so they can stay with their parents as they grow.

They are so hard to get a good picture of because they are so small and hide really well, but I love this picture because of the little face in the middle that looks like Maggie Simpson!

Updates!

Well, its been some time since I've actually updated my blog so this could be a lengthily post!

Its been a tough few months for us, what with illnesses with other pets as well as our seahorses.  We lost two of our cats within a few months of each other, and have another sick one.  What with the ongoing problems with our Old English Sheepdog, the last 6 months really have been quite trying times for us.

Our H.comes and H.barbouri females have just got out of HT after apparent bacterial infections which thankfully they both responded well to treatment.  I'm really hoping to get a mate at some point for my female comes as she really is quite stunning.

Mouse

Mouse was tiny when we got her, around 2 years ago.  She was probably about 2 inches in size, hence her name.  She now is quite the size, and quite the little hunter!

Our erectus have given us several broods of babies, most of which we have given away.  They have taken a bit of a break in breeding but I think that my male may be pregnant again.  We did keep his very first brood of babies and manage to raise half of the brood.  After a terrible accident with the tank, we were only left with one baby, but he is now 5 months old and starting to get big.  He seems to be developing a pouch, so I'm hoping that he is indeed a he.

The other baby that we have is the 9 week old sibling to the 5 month old.  We moved them into the same tank when the younger one was 4 weeks old as it seemed silly keeping two tanks going with just one fry in each.  It was a risk, but thankfully it paid off.  The younger one started to take to the frozen almost straight away.  In fact, the bigger the mysis the better, although its obviously unable to eat them whole it will give it a darn good try!

Here are a couple of pictures of them.

9 Week old H.erectus fry

H.erectus fry hunting

5 Month old H.erectus juvenile

As the juvenile seahorses has quite a bit of algae growth starting to cover it, I have started to reduce the photo period of the tank in the hopes of ridding it of the algae.

Just a quick update on the dwarfs.  Although we have had several broods, we have been largely unsuccessful with raising the fry, and so far only have one.  We have decided that any future broods will be separated from the parents and raised in a dedicated fry tank.  I'm hoping to have some more babies in the next week or so, and will post pictures if/when we get more.

Erectus Fry at 3 Weeks Old

The erectus babies are now 3 weeks old.  We have 9 of them left which isn't great but most of the losses, if not all of them, are down to mistakes that we have made.  This week we lost 2 in an accident with a new filter that we were using temporarily whilst we cleaned the main one.  We didn't realise that it had a pull off part near the top of the tank which created suction and three of the fry got trapped overnight.  We released them as soon as we saw them but sadly one was already dead and another died shortly after.

Yesterday we lost another baby after doing a 100% water change and not acclimating them to the new water.  Lessons learned!

Anyway, the ones that we have now all appear to be healthy and strong.

We have started to introduce frozen Cyclopeeze now.  There isn't much interest at the moment but I've definitely seen a couple of them eat some so I'm hoping that by the end of the week all of them will be eating the frozen food.

Our dwarf babies are also doing fantastic.  In fact, it really is quite incredible how quickly they have grown!