Hoover, my color-changing seahorse
In a previous post, I introduced you to my five lovable seahorses and their personalities. On December 26, 2009, I came home from a long, busy holiday weekend to my aquarium “crashing.” Sadly, I lost many of my saltwater critters including three of my seahorses - Ellis, Debelius, and Kuiter. If you know me, you know my life pretty much revolves around seahorses and aquariums. Needless to say, I was devastated.
Juniper wearing Asterina starfish, There's a new sheriff in town!
Thankfully, two seahorses survived – my large male Juniper and small female Hoover. I didn’t know how the two of them would get along; Juniper had been bonded to Ellis all his life and never paid much attention to Hoover. To my relief it didn’t take long for the two survivors to become good friends.
In the spring after the tank crash, my husband and I started to talk about getting more seahorses. We missed having a group of seahorses to watch playing together. Imagine my surprise on March 15th when I woke up to almost fifty of Juniper and Hoover’s baby seahorses in the sump of my aquarium! It turns out the two of them were getting along a lot better than I had realized.
Newborn seahorse, only a few hours old
I’ve been reading about seahorse propagation for a few years on Seahorse.org, but had no intentions of trying it myself until I lived in something larger than a one bedroom apartment. I wasn’t worried about it before the tank crash because Juniper and Ellis mated and courted regularly, but never produced any fry. When Juniper lost his mate, he paired with Hoover, who is apparently much more fertile than his previous mate was. Instead of buying more seahorses, I decided to try raising the fry. I knew it would be difficult, expensive, and time consuming with little chance of success, but I didn’t want to give up on these eight- millimeter long perfectly formed CUTE miniature seahorses. Stay tuned to read more about Juniper and Hoover’s babies!
Share
Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, until I read this I never thought about keeping seahorses but they sound like beautiful, fascinating animals. Good luck to Juniper and Hoover.
How cute!
Aww, very cute! I have a question, what else can you house with seahorses? I thought clownfish made good housemates but, then I read seahorses have to be kept completely alone.
Thank you!
Actually there are lots of tank mates that can live with seahorses. Stay away from most corals, anemones, crabs, and clams that can pinch. Small, juvenile seahorses do best when kept alone, but when they are adults you could try small gobies, yellow Brotulids, and other little peaceful fish that don’t eat too fast. I keep a those mentioned along with a Yasha Goby, Tilefish, Curious Wormfish, and a Bristletail Filefish (all from Diver’s Den) with my adult seahorses that are over four inches tall.