Experience with seahorse survival

[trilinearmipmap]

For those who have kept seahorses, were they wild caught or captive bred, and how long have you kept them alive? The answers to this poll will help me decide whether to get seahorses.

[Chaotic Cricket]

For those who have kept seahorses, were they wild caught or captive bred, and how long have you kept them alive? The answers to this poll will help me decide whether to get seahorses.

I would suggest forgetting about wild caught seahorses. Stick with captive bred.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

I have kept wc (in the old days before cr were readily available) and they were difficult but I usually needed to always keep at least one other "trained" seahorse around to teach the new ones how to eat frozen mysis. I also work at home so I can spend the required time to squirt food at them all the time.

They are now all cr with the CITES ban & that makes them reasonably easier to raise & keep alive. I still think that anyone interested in keeping seahorses think long & hard because of their special needs. You should have a tank dedicated to just seahorses or maybe with a few small, slow, harmless fish (I kept mysis eating mandarin gobies with mine). You also need to feed at least twice a day & still keep water quality high. Try tnot to have bristleworms in a seahorse tank because they will reach epidemic proportions in most seahorse species tanks.

Seahorses are extremely cute, but they don't really move around much, so don't expect them to "entertain" you that way, except at feeding time.

Anthony

[Beverly]

I've only kept CB, never WC. Unfortunately, my males often got air in their pouches and they died no matter how I tried to evac the pouches. Females lived much longer than males in my SH tank.

[howdy20012002]

i have lost a few over the last few months..
they just seem to slowly waste away.
They are TR.
I personally woudn't buy WC, simply because the rate of survival is so low.
it gets to be an ethical dilemma of killing things for our own purpose.
Neal

[Chowder]

I had my captive bread sea horses for about 3 months. I got board with the tank and ended up selling them. So can't tell you how long they would survive but I would sugest getting captive bred. They seem to be more prone to taking frozen foods and not relying on live foods.

[Beverly]

IME, having a feeding station for mysis (preferably PE mysis) instead of just dropping in food for SHs, makes a huge difference in the amount of food they eat.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Yup, train them to eat in one place all the time. Of course, sometimes just training them to eat frzn mysis is the trick, even if cr, some will get stressed from switching tanks & stop eating. Seen it happen before.

Anthony

[trilinearmipmap]

Just wondering where people got their seahorses from.

[Beverly]

Got my Shs from a supplier in ON. Unfortunately, he is no longer in business.

[BCOrchidGuy]

I've had both WC and CB and had good and bad experiences with both. CB seahorses can go off eating when shipped like was said before, I found a small power head moving frozen mysis around the bottom often would get them to take some food and once you get them to start they learn quick.

Seahorses can be very tempermental, put a lot of research into what you are considering and for starters I'd stick with H. Kuda (black kudas) or go into dwarfs as they tend to take to brine shrimp.

I've been looking for a breeder in Canada and haven't found anyone yet but for a price one of the pet stores will order some in for you. Right now J&L has some H. Redei but the price is (wow) $180 each. They had some tiny kuda's but they were very expensive as well.

Doug

[Mikee]

We had our seahorses for close to a year..when we first bought them from the petstore we thought the pair had no chance of survival since they werent eating
at all in the start. We kept feeding mysis shrimp and eventually they starting eating it and were thriving. Many many batch of young babies all the time even got a couple to reach about an inch or 2! but then we had problems with feeding them and the baby ponies eventually died. We decided to get another seahorse a yellowish one (pair were black) dont remember names..but that one quickly died due to not eating anything! I must say though its really neat whatching the young burst out of the males pouch and a cloud of babies swimming around. Been about 2 yrs since i had some again but its definitely something i will use my 50g breeder for in the future :biggrin: after my 90g reef. Only thing i found hard about seahorses was being able to get them to eat.. once you got them eating i found its pretty simple. You should definitely give it a try though its well worth it.

[trilinearmipmap]

It looks like a small sample size but over 50% one-year survival for both captive-bred and wild caught seahorses. I wonder what their survival in nature is.

[trilinearmipmap]

Now that some more time has passed it looks like more than half the wild-caught seahorse died before one year, and more than half of the captive-bred seahorses died within a year also. Either that or there are some poll respondents who have seahorses which are still alive, but have had them for less than one year.