My New Venture

[yveterinarian]

Thanks everyone, yes it could have been much worse. My heart dropped to my feet I think when they told me they were denying the shipment. It was a stressful time but they are all safe now. Of the 6 babies born there are 5 left now. I do a head count of the babies every morning and it is very hard to find them. The adults are eating well I think but it is hard to tell for sure as they are so little. The only way I can tell is that I am seeing poops. Tomorrow I'm going to get some little nassarius snails to help clean up the detritus.

Ammonia level still zero this morning after several heavy feedings of live brine shrimp so my tank is doing well. I am pleased as I wasn't sure how much ammonia to have the tank clear in order to get ready.

 

[Sewerat]

Sounds like you've got this down pat already. Still need to make it buy for a peak, one day soon hopefully. And maybe I should get a bottle of brine shrimp for a treat for my fish from you.

 

[yveterinarian]

Sounds like you've got this down pat already. Still need to make it buy for a peak, one day soon hopefully. And maybe I should get a bottle of brine shrimp for a treat for my fish from you.

You are welcome to come by on a weekend sometime. Let me know when you would like to come and hopefully we can make it work.

 

[chief hill]

Wow! Now this takes allot of persistence and patient's. I have neither when it comes to dealing with Customs and paperwork red tape. Well done congratulations on the build. It's beautiful.

 

[yveterinarian]

Thought I'd post a few new pictures of my little lovelies

This one I have included to give you an idea of the size of the adults. It is perched inside a regular square of eggcrate. they seem to like the eggcrate and I often see them peeking out at me from the squares. the baby in the picture is going after the brine shrimp.

So far, all are doing well. I have lost 4 adults in total and 3 more babies were born. I counted 8 babies one morning but they are so hard to see that I can't always find them. Every morning I play "where's Waldo" and try to count them all. I think it's a losing battle because they hide so well.

 

[sunnykita]

fabulous pics Yvette ! looks like they are quite comfy in their new home ! thanks for the update and Congratulations !

 

[yveterinarian]

So far I've had a loss of 7 adults including the one that died during shipping. I thought I'd take the opportunity to show how tiny these little guys are

 

[sunnykita]

Hi Yvette, I'd say that's not bad for losses all things considered, or do you think differently? Wow ! I thought they were tiny when I saw the photo in the eggcrating, but this photo truly tells you how tiny they are. Wishing you the best of luck, (not that I think you need it) with these little guys. Thanks again for the updates, I love seeing them
Sherry

 

[yveterinarian]

Hi Sherry, I guess the losses aren't bad but to me any loss is difficult. I keep watching the babies daily to make sure they are still there and so far I see 4 - 5 everyday. They are so good at hiding that I often can't find them at all then begin to panic until I see them. I can't find all 8 babies but I have learned that doesn't mean much.
I have increased the amount of each feed and the length of time the pumps are off to give them the best chance at getting food. There are still a few very skinny ones in there that I'm hoping will begin to look healthier soon. When I look back at the first pictures I see I have captured some of the very skinny ones and know they arrived that way and aren't because of lack of food on my end, but it's always difficult losing one.

 

[sunnykita]

I understand completely how the losses affect you, hopefully you'll be able to get them fattened up soon. I know you have the patience and the skill to do just that ! do you have to watch these little ones for any parasites they may have arrived with? Just curious, and these little ones have don't have a bare bottom tank is there a reason for that? I'm sure there must be. Best of luck

 

[yveterinarian]

They shouldn't have any parasites since they are captive bred. I went with a sand bottom since I don't have a sump and wanted extra surface area for the good bacteria. I want to be able to take the fake plants out to clean them and didn't want to deplete the bacteria too much. Maybe later I'll decide a bare bottom is easier and add a sump, I'm not sure yet.

 

[deeznutz]

Great little tank. Very ambitious and lucky with customs.
I'd love to keep dwarfs, but I think they would be a bit too much work.

Can you give us a brief overview of your day to day routine and husbandry?

 

[yveterinarian]

My daily routine usually lasts about 1 hour to 1.5 hours first thing in the morning including cleaning my fry tanks, feeding all of the tanks, looking after the brine shrimp and staring at my tanks . For the brine shrimp I have 3 hatcheries going. First I have to decapsulate the eggs with bleach (I do enough for the week and save them in the fridge). The first hatchery is new eggs for hatching. In 24 hours I sterilize with Hydrogen peroxide then rinse and move them to the second hatchery to grow and hatch further. The second hatchery gets rinsed 24 hours later and the brine go into the third hatchery where they get enriched ready for the seahorse fry and dwarves. I enrich the brine in the morning and the evening if there are any left. Therefore, every morning I rinse each hatchery. I also sterilize the bottles with bleach and soak in Prime to neutralize the bleach as I rinse out the brine so I have a few more bottles than I need so that I can always use one while the other is sterilizing. I start a new batch of brine every day since it takes 3 days for them to be ready for feeding to my fry and dwarves.
I feed the youngest fry and the dwarves 3-4 times a day at 0700,1100,1700 and 2200. The older fry get fed only twice a day. It felt very labour intensive in the beginning but now it's second nature. I clean out the canister filter weekly to rinse the floss in fresh saltwater and get any live brine back out then put them back into the dwarf tank. I haven't vacuumed the sand yet since the tank is so new but I will be very soon. I put in 3 nassarius snails to help clean up the detritus but so far haven't seen them doing much. I will be doing water changes every 3-4 weeks depending on how the parameters go.

 

[sunnykita]

Thanks for the explanation Yvette, that makes sense, I was curious and now I know. You make it sound simple, and I'm sure with routine it would become second nature and routine, but Wow ! what a routine to get in to ! Cudos to you my friend I am simply amazed ! I hope to get out for a visit soon and to see the newest additions ! Simply amazing !

 

[unibob]

Awesome explanation.

To break it down simple just a bit simpler if you could. I am wondering what the routine would be for a pair of the h. Erectus that you have for sale if they were in there own tank?

Would the dwarfs have the same type of routine?


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[yveterinarian]

The H. Erectus routine is much simpler than the dwarves because they don't require live food. For my Erectus tank I have bare bottom to make cleaning easier. I suck out the poops daily with a syringe attached to a piece of rigid tubing. (5 minutes max) Then I feed them frozen PE Mysis twice a day. I rinse the frozen Mysis in hot water then cold to get some of the oils off them and toss it in the tank. I also suck out any uneaten food before I feed the next batch. Once a month they get a good tank cleaning and water change. That's it, nice and simple.
The dwarf tank requires more feeding times and live food. Since I was already doing it for the Erectus fry, it was simple for me to expand into the dwarves but it does take some getting used to how long to bleach the brine cysts for so that they will still hatch but most of the shell is gone. The shell seems to hold a lot of bacteria and hydroids which can kill the fry and dwarves very easily. When I first started feeding the fry I didn't de-capsulate the first batch of brine and ended up with hydroids in my fry system - all from one batch of hatched brine not de-capsulated! The only treatment for hydroids is Panacur so now all of my fry tanks can never have snails but luckily I don't use snails in that system.

 

[yveterinarian]

Turned on the lights this morning and found this little guy

hitching a ride on a Nassarius snail. Couldn't resist getting a picture of it!

 

[yveterinarian]

I am daily amazed at the color variations of these little guys! For the last few years I have gotten used to my H Erectus coloring and can spot one from a mile away even if mislabelled in a store but these guys are all different. If I were just to see a photograph with nothing to give me a size reference, I don't think I could tell you what kind it was based on color. I have some that are black, white, caramel, rust, striped and even one that strongly reminds me of my cat Jerry...

Do you see the resemblance? My daughter keeps naming them after horses that she rides because so many of them have coloring like her favorite horses.
I found 4 new babies the other day. Of the first babies that were born I can only count 2 but they are growing and seem to be doing well. They are so hard to find at times that I really don't know how many are in there. I do a daily baby count just for fun. Maybe I'll get better at spotting them later but I have one plant in there that it is almost impossible to see the babies on. Of course they seem to like that plant!

 

[sunnykita]

priceless Yvette ! sitting in the plant now that's cute !

 

[yveterinarian]

Thanks Sherry, I often find them in that plant peeking out over the top of a leaf. They look adorable in there and I keep thinking of Thumbelina in her flower when I see it.