Babies! And wait... more babies?!

Yesterday I planned on making a post today giving an update on our babies born on the 16th, they are doing great! But Jeff and Sparkles had a little surprise, or a lot of little surprises for us when we woke up, new babies!!! They are all set up in their new tank, filling their little tiny bellies and even hitching onto and pulling around their new brothers and sisters. These little guys look strong and happy!

Below are our babies from from the 16th, they looked small until we saw the new guys this morning :) Just a couple of days makes a big difference! 

As excited as we are to share the news of new babies, we are also excited to share with you that we will be starting a weekly giveaway beginning February 1st. We are in the process of creating some cool T-shirts for both men and women and some very cool seahorse jewelry. Please check back to see the giveaway items. All you have to do is become a follower. We will even enter your name twice if you become a follower and leave a comment. 

I am off to try and get a picture of Jeff and Sparkles "dancing." I am sure he will have eggs by the end of the night!! 

What will we do with all these babies?!?!

Over 200 seahorses isn't a lot right?? Well... even my husband and I realize that with 13 of our own seahorses we cannot keep all the babies (as much as we would like to!) We will likely keep a couple of our first babies because we worked so hard for those little guys to make it that we couldn't possibly see them go. The other babies will be old enough and strong enough to go to new homes within the next four weeks. We will begin posting them on our website saltandseahorses.com (currently under construction). Unlike other websites that sell seahorses, we will have a "what you see if what you get" page called "pick your pony," where you will be able to choose exactly which seahorse you would like to arrive at your door. (Yes! We ship anywhere in the U.S.) The "pick your pony" page will feature some of our cooler, more unique seahorses.

We currently have Hippocampus Erectus seahorses available. They are very beautiful seahorses and ideal for beginners as they are a little more forgiving than other species. All of our seahorses are trained to eat frozen food to make it as easy as possible on their caretaker. We are even working on getting them to eat out of a feeding dish to make it even easier and cut down on waste in the tank. It is ideal for seahorses to be kept in their own tank, as they are too slow to compete with other fish for food. We have found that two seahorses is always better than one! :) When they have a mate, or just a friend, they are much more active and playful, these little guys will dance together, play in the bubbles or just hitch onto each other and swim around. Our juveniles are mostly females which is ideal if you are looking to have more than one seahorse in a tank and do not want to have to deal with babies that you do not plan on raising (it is almost guaranteed a male and female will mate).

Until then, I will share a picture of the oldest gals, and hopefully tomorrow some pictures of our youngest, born in the video below. They are doing great!

Finally!

Finally at 9:30 this morning we had lots of little babies! My husband was on top of things and for the first time we got in on camera!

So that you have a little background before watching the clip, the male and female, after flirting for what seems like forever will position themselves just right so that they are facing each other and the male will open his pouch and the female will insert her eggs into his pouch. It is truly amazing how they do this in the water, it looks like they are dancing! From there the male nourishes and hatches those eggs inside his pouch and usually about two weeks from the day the eggs are inserted the male gives birth, shooting the babies right out of his pouch! Then I guess its all up to us from there :) 

There were probably about 100 babies in this batch, which is pretty normal for this male. As he gets larger and his mate gets larger they will produce more babies. 

If you watch carefully, when he isn't even finished he goes down to the rock where his mate is and immediately starts flirting! I am sure this guy will have more eggs in his pouch by the end of the day, the female has been producing them the whole time he was pregnant. No matter how many times I see it I will always be amazed! 

Now its off to set these little guys up in a 10 gallon and start hatching baby brine shrimp for them to eat for about the first month until they can eat normal sized food. Let the fun begin! 

Waiting...

Last weekend I told myself I would wait to make a post until Tuesday the 10th when we had new babies. Well, of course he did not deliver on his due date, or the next day, or the next, or the next... Today he fired off a warning shot, yup, one baby. This is pretty common and we are hoping that since seahorses typically deliver first thing in the morning as the sun is coming up that it will be tomorrow, as it appears from his warning shot that he is literally ready to pop! :) 

As we wait for him, we are anxiously waiting for two, possibly three other males as well. So, while we wait, I will share with you some pictures of a pair of wild seahorses that we have. We have four wild caught seahorses and we go to great lengths to accommodate these big guys. And when I say big, they are by far the largest seahorses we have and that I have ever seen. They are a good 8 inches if not larger and are the most beautiful seahorses I have ever seen. The pictures are of Big momma and Big daddy. They have had one batch of babies so far, 570 babies, yes I counted them all. They have been flirting like crazy since but have not had any more babies. I think that he is pregnant now but we are not sure so we are keeping our fingers crossed! 

I will hopefully be back soon to share pictures of lots of tiny babies! 

Big daddy is the browner one with the pouch, that is where he carries his babies :) If he is pregnant it is very recent because his pouch gets HUGE! 

Meet our current babies!

Our oldest babies are about 2 1/2 months old and they are troopers! When I say trooper, I mean it in every sense of the word. These babies were our second ever batch and they lived through us learning what was right and wrong and a lot of mistakes in between. They are now trained to eat frozen mysis and love to dance for us, hoping to be fed as soon as we walk up to the tank. They are looking cooler and cooler everyday and will be moved to a juvenile tank soon!

Our second oldest babies will be a month old tomorrow and they are growing fast! They are feisty little guys with eyes bigger than their mouths! They are trying their hardest to snatch up adult brine but aren't quite big enough yet :) 

Our littlest babies were just born on Tuesday. Their parents are one of our wild caught pairs, Sparkles and Jeff :)  These are their first babies ever and I have been waiting and waiting for them to have babies because Sparkles, as her name implies, sparkles! She is beautiful and I can only hope her babies will be just as pretty! They are still so little it is hard to get a good picture but as soon as I do I will be sure to share! Now that they've had their first batch its just a matter of time before we have more sparkly babies, they are flirting as I type!

Our next batch will be birthday babies as they are due on my husbands birthday, January 10th! And our newest pair, the female I posted a picture of in my earlier post should be having babies sometime next week as well! Well, the female wont be having the babies, her mate will. Oh yes, in the seahorse world it is done the other way around, the male carries and delivers the babies! But I will save that explanation for another day :)

You breed seahorses?

When my husband and I tell people we breed seahorses you can only imagine the kind of responses we get. Some people are fascinated, some people think we are crazy. Well, we are crazy but we are doing what we love and hope that the people who are fascinated may have a little fun seeing what it is all about. 

How does one start breeding seahorses you may ask. My husband and I have been in the salt water aquarium hobby for a couple of years and there is nothing we love more. When I was pregnant last year we thought it would be cute to set up a little seahorse tank in our daughters nursery. We bought two seahorses from a local breeder and that was it, we were satisfied. They were cute and fun and just what we wanted. Unfortunately we went away on vacation and the day after we left something went wrong and when we came home our seahorses had passed away :( 

I was devastated and wanted two more seahorses. After calling the breeder we had bought them from, she told us that she was getting out of the hobby and asked if we would be interested in her last three pairs. Of course we were! Then out of sheer curiosity I asked just how hard it was to raise the babies. I knew that it was pretty inevitable they would breed unless we separated them, but I wasn't planning on actually raising any babies. For goodness sakes we already had six!

Not long after we brought them home I fell in love with these seahorses and knew that as soon as I saw their little babies swimming around there would be no way I couldn't try to raise them. So that was how it all started. I was determined, no matter how hard and time consuming everyone said it was going to be that we could do it. It has taken a while, unfortunately a good amount of fatalities, and a ridiculous amount of salt water but we've got it figured out!!!! 

So please join us as we share with you the mesmerizing world of our seahorses courting each other, mating, giving birth and growing to become beautiful seahorses that will hopefully make someone as happy as they make us :) 

I leave you with a picture of our newest (and might I add coolest!) female who is still in need of a name! Any ideas?