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One last thing before we start the podcast, I'd like to ask you, my listeners, for story submissions. We started storytime series because you guys asked us for different stories for our hobbies, because you loved our off topic stories during the podcast, and it's been a very successful bit. We're on storytime four was the last episode, but the next story time that we want to do, we want to read your stories. So if you have a silly fish story or some experience that even lightly has to do with the hobby, please submit your submissions to the Aquarium Guys email address. Go to aquariumgyspodcast.com. In the bottom of the website, you'll find our email telephone number that you send a text message or leave a voicemail. We'll take YouTube submissions. We'll take any type of submission you want to send us. And if we like yours the best, not only will we show it on air, but we may send you a great prize. Send in those stories, and let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium Guide podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob olson. Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. Jimmy, you are in such a good mood. If I didn't know better, I'd say you got to kick a midget.
I did not get to kick a midget, but that's what I want for Christmas.
I don't know why that's a catchphrase for you, but it makes you smile even more.
I told you why I wanted the midget, but I can't say on this podcast because it's too dirty.
Why? Because you wouldn't give me those midget wrestling tickets that you went to without me anyways. Bad guys.
Hoping people, too, Jim.
I just always wanted the midget because everything looks bigger than their hand. That's all I'm saying.
Well, I'm Rob Zulson.
Hey, I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam Elnashire.
Hey, adam's. Here.
So we have wonderful guests from Maryland that have decided to come and join us on their vacation.
Dilly.
Dilly. dilly.
Cheers to you guys. We have alyssa and Capille. From alyssa's seahorse savvy. Hopefully I covered that correctly.
You did.
You got it. Thank you.
I thought they bailed already. Wonderful.
I'm normally bad with names. I mean, if you listen to no, you are bad with horrible with names. It took me five times. I finally got Capille's name knocked down.
Yeah, we're hoping that's a special one.
Well, I'm special.
Are you a special capille.
I mean, you're on the podcast. Clearly, you're special. Well, guys, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. We are super excited. Really? Nobody else better to talk to about seahorses than you guys. And trust me, I've done my homework. I have reached out to research because I know nothing about seahorses. I'm not going to lie to you. I know that you should not put a penny in the tank. I know that the dudes are the ones that get deposited.
Tell our guest what happened when you put pennies in it.
Let's make fun of us.
Pennies in the tank, what happened?
Recap.
Okay, so I used to have a retail pet store and I had a pair of seahorses, and they were a bonded, mated pair. And the mail had a pouch full of babies and I wasn't going to sell them because the male had a pouch of babies. And this was like, I don't even know.
A long, long time ago.
It was like 15 years ago now.
In the last four times.
This guy was pissed. He wanted to buy my seahorses. And I'm like, I'm not telling you the seahorses. It was like to the end of my shop day, I closed at six and I was there arguing with them. anyways, long story short, I come in the next morning and my seahorses are dead because there's the little bastard threw pennies in my tank.
And that's back when pennies were actually made out of copper.
Yes, well, that was a long time ago.
I remember.
Well, it was only 82, so I was pissed.
That's another sad, sad story from Adam.
So regardless, I know very little about seahorses. So I had to come, like, from the complete outside and research who would be the best person to talk to because we do get a lot of questions about seahorses, especially since Adam had that story that was so ever popular. So again, happy to have you both on, finally. And before we interview with you guys about you, your business and expertise in seahorses, we do have a couple of questions. And please, alyssa Capille, please join in if you have anything to add to it or just make fun of us.
Or if we're wrong, tell us we're wrong.
I mean, that too.
And then the interview will be over.
First question was on our Facebook page, daniel Put. Okay, I need Jim or Adams help. rob's might know too.
Right?
So we understand how things are classified.
A vote of confidence already towards you.
Vote of confidence. I'm looking for I'm not going to pronounce it. I'm not going to lie to you. I know it as the Indonesian superdwarf fish. That was the common name.
Never heard of it.
Tiny little dot of almost like a small scissor. As bora, but like a little color. Okay. They're a blip. He says they're the smallest. He puts on here. The smallest fish in the world. I don't know if that's accurate at all. I know it's probably the smallest fish. Full grown in aquarium. Hobby, definitely tiny. But he says, I cannot find them online or local. So I'm asking your help for the guys'knowledge. Help an advent listener out. I'm based in Seattle, so we had some people message on the Facebook page trying to help out. Honestly, I went out looking because I've seen these on lists, rarely on secrets before, COVID it was just sporadically. Maybe they'll have it for a week and then they're gone. There are some other wholesalers that have offered it rarely from some of our international lists, but I have yet to see it in a long time and I'm pretty sure Culwood is going to keep that wrapped up to bread and butterfish for most of the suppliers. So I think your best bet is trying to find some of these people that really work well at Oddball Fish, the wet spot. I believe that's in the that was.
Going to be my recommendation.
Yeah, they do a good job because they have a lot of weird, oddball stuff and they pride themselves on oddball stuff and I know that that's a reputable place, honestly. This is an open forum. If you're listening, you know, of some Indonesian super dwarf fish message, the podcast. We will happily talk about it on the next podcast and let the people know where they can get this obscure fish.
I think our best bet would be that maybe somebody personally has some and are willing to let some go. So maybe we can make that love connection for you.
Heck, yeah.
Some guy sitting there in the tank full of them, he knows that no one else has them. It's like, got $50, like, done cash. Here you go.
There you go. And then we get a 10% finders fee. It's just that's what we normally do.
Just buy a hoodie.
That's all we have. There we go.
So do you guys of the Seahorse Savvy do anything besides seahorses?
We do seahorse friendly tank mates. We don't breed them. We do corals and we do some inverts. We do have freshwater tanks and stuff, but we do not sell freshwater.
I'm trying to stop myself from questions, because immediately I go to what's seahorse friendly? But we're going to get to that pause myself. I'm going to be a good boy. And we're into the interrelated.
Wow, that's the first you've ever stopped talking.
I'm going to be a good boy. Adam goes, yeah, well, you guys are being mean to rubs.
Yeah, well, guess what? Stuck at your stuffy.
Well, that's it. You're just happy because you actually got some metamucil after your mick rib runs.
He doesn't need metamucil because of the mc ribs.
No, I do not. I actually needed to eat sawdust just to slow things down after eating Mcgribs.
Is that right?
Oh, yeah. It helps tremendously.
Just a little bit of cotton swabbing.
Yeah, absolutely. All right, what else you got?
We have some text messages, so hey, guys, a breeding fish question. Do cherry shrimp eat fish eggs? I'm preparing a 20 gallon aquarium to breed bumble Bee Autocynclus and want to eliminate any threats to the eggs. Thanks.
I would definitely not have cherry shrimp in there with them.
So let's put it this way.
Out of bumblebee.
Ottos, too. jeez, that's difficult.
Out of a totem pole, of all things. Freshwater cherry shrimp are the lowest of my list. But know that all eggs are delicious superfood that every fish will eat. Honestly, any fish, any shrimp, they will go after them. Now, how much damage can a bunch of cherry shrimp do to a batch of eggs? Maybe they won't kill them all, but they'll certainly go after them.
Even if they get the outside of them, take that protective coating off of them, you're going to ruin a lot of eggs 100%. I would just do a species specific tank and just do those auto synchronouss in there alone. So if you do get lucky and you get some eggs, that you'll have success.
I have a friend in upstate New York that breeds all sorts of shrimp in the same tank. He breeds his bristlenose plecos and he doesn't he seems to have more than enough varieties of Bristolnose pleckos. But I agree with you on on most most of the fish, but cherry shrimp might eat their eggs.
Yeah, I have I'm looking at actually right across the room here from a podcast studio. I'm looking at a 90 gallon square that I have. And I'm probably sitting on 2000 babies at this moment because I have like three, four batches. There's another batch of this I found just for you, Jimmy, last night.
I hate you so much.
And the big thing is the adults protect them. I have all kinds of shrimp, all kinds of egg predators in there. And because they're in eggs, the adults protect them so well with Bristol nose.
Plus they're in a cave. Right? With those being in a cave, it's very hard for the shrimp to get in there because they're very protective and stuff. So you have somebody guarding the eggs.
It's actually hard to get the adults to stop getting out of the cave and go feed after you strip a cave.
I'm not even familiar how autocynclis breed. Does anybody know how to autocycles breed?
As far as I've understood, I thought that they always laid eggs on the glass.
I think they breed similar to corians.
Yeah.
So they will skip their eggs to the glass. So that would be hard for them to protect. So yeah, I would definitely probably just skip. And as a cherry shrimp, as far.
As I know, they don't protect farewell as well, but and Bristol knows as well, but I don't think ottos do, probably because they lay so many that.
They just don't well, they're lazy too.
Okay, just tell them all how you feel.
Is this the part where we play the theme from jeopardy?
Right.
Holy crap. Do you have a stroke over there.
No, next one actually got already answered, so we're on top of the game.
Jim wow. It is Christmas, so we all want to go out caroling later on.
It is. Speaking of which, have you decided if you want to do insult caroling with me this year?
Insult caroling?
Right.
You saw what I did the last time we were out in November and people had their Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving. I stopped and booed at people's houses.
It was the best. We went out to eat, and you're driving along, you and your wife and me and my wife in the back seat, and we're having a good old time because it's like, wow, we get to go to one meal in this whole COVID disaster. So we go out and you scout eyes, stop at a stop light and roll down your windows and start just yelling, boo.
Boo.
What is going on? I'm looking in all directions. And then he's like, no, look at those assholes. And he points over to a house Christmas decorator with lights. He's like, It's not even Thanksgiving yet.
Boo.
So that's what we did the whole way. Every house that we saw, we all roll our windows down and boot.
There was some drinking involved, too.
It was a good time. So, Jimmy, do you have any news before we get into the interview?
I've got nothing. I'm just really excited here. We're recording this on the Monday before Christmas. I want to thank everybody for a wonderful year. We're kind of coming to the end of the year very shortly, and this podcast has been a blessing to us, especially. We've got several thousand people that listen to us every week. And this just becomes more popular, more popular, and it's way beyond our dreams. And for that, I would want to thank everybody for tuning in to listening and stuff. And if you want some new stuff for us to talk about, go ahead and send it to us and we will see if we can find that particular professional person to answer your questions, or else we'll make it up.
And if you want to join these sessions live again, we record these to produce in the podcast, but we do only have it just available live. There's no post recordings. Afterwards, you can come join us. Aquariumguyspodcast.com. Be part of the studio audience on the bottom of the site. You'll find discord, but even that's filling. And you can find us on twitch Tvacquariumguys.
Oh, twitch. twitch for the T. Yeah.
Kind of like what you do after.
14 hangover kicks in. 14 shots of tequila.
There you go. Well, also, the other news that you didn't say, jimmy what's that? We got our pillows in.
We did. We got some very nice merchant. We were even us, we were impressed. And we're not just because we're selling this stuff. It's we actually ordered some pillows in, some T shirts in, and the quality is fantastic. We're so happy with this new merchandise.
We assume that the pillows are going to be like that T shirt material where you get that rubber plasticky crap they print on a shirt and then it cracks off later. No, it's like completely woven into the fabric. It was definitely a pleasant surprise. So now I have pillows. You have pillows.
I have pillows.
And even Adam is going to be getting pillows when we send his that's right. Right, Adam?
Yes.
Pillow time. So what we're saying is go to Aquarium Guys podcast website. We have merged a couple of keeps the lights on and do a pillow fight for us.
Naked. Yeah. Do a pillow fight for us. Get all your girlfriends and no, no.
We'Re our show is mostly guys. Jim.
Okay, no more yeg before the pump.
Let's skip that part and not do the pillow fight. But we actually have a hoodie here that we needed to sign, somebody who said they want us to sign it. And so it'd be our first hoodie that we've ever signed legally and that we're asked to sign.
Yeah, we were asked to sign. We've signed a lot of things, but it's more like the speeding violation when you were in traffic.
Jimmy speeding violations. Stay away from my house violations, that sort of thing. Yeah, right.
But anyway, training orders.
You don't need to sign.
No, you don't. But I kind of want to be the sheldon of Big Bang Theory, where we have all these restraining orders from high end people like Leonard nimoy from spock, from Star Trek.
I'm not allowing you to have as much TV time as you'd be getting.
That's a lot. So, anyway, if you want something signed, we'd be happy to do that for you at no charge. But if you wanted to donate a case of beer I do like beer. Even a twelve pack? I'd go for a six pack. It is the holiday season.
I'm seriously cutting off an eggnog.
There we go. That's what it is.
All right, eggnog, let's get on to this.
All right, well, to dive into the interview, we always ask certain introductory questions, but first off, right, you guys have been very busy, right? You guys have the seahorsavvycom is the listing. If you guys want to see this, tell us, number one, a little bit about yourselves, just as an introductory so we can get to know you both and how long you've been working the business.
Well, my name is alyssa, and we just celebrated our 6th year in business. Before that, I worked in Coral aquaculture and then started Sea or Savvy while I was still doing Coral aquaculture, and then branched off from there. And I've been doing it full time for about four years now. And yes, wonderful.
How about you, kapil?
I started in the hobby very young. When I was three, my dad joined the Southwest Michigan Aquarium Society and I grew up in there. And I actually started keeping seahorses long before alyssa did. But she's much smarter than I am. And she actually made a business out of it. Mine were just called dorm props.
So you're just writing her coat?
Pretty much.
He likes to remind me he's been doing it longer than me, though. It's because he's older.
Not that a lot older.
What's a lot older?
I think I'm five years younger than she is.
That true.
You don't really know my birthday.
But she claims he celebrates his 25th birthday quite a few times.
Done it eleven times in a row.
I feel like you're good.
Not that old, but it gets him going, so we remind him of his age.
I feel like you're like that guy who had the birthday on leap year and it took him to like age 60 before he could actually legally drink.
I'll tell you a quick story. My mom and dad had the same birthday, the same year. And I lost my mom back in twelve. And I lost my dad here in 18. But every time that we had to have the tombstone redone that they remember, they could have the start date and the end date, and the start dates for both of them are the same day. And I found out from my dad. I was always told that my mom was about 1012 hours older than my dad. And my dad's deathbed, he told me. So, you know your mom lied about that? I'm older like my 6 hours.
Did you shatter your existence?
Yeah, I did. My mom lied to me. I can't believe it. She told me I was cute, but that's probably the first lie.
So I guess the next question to go with this how do you guys meet and do business together?
Well, I kept a lot of different fish and I stopped keeping seahorses for a while. And when I was in grad school, I was working at an aquarium shop and somebody brought in a couple of seahorses. And nobody really bought them. They were wild caught seahorses. And I kind of felt like ignited to keep them again. So I got the pair and then I wanted more. And I started looking online and I found alyssa and we became friends and I got more and more seahorses again. And long story short, he convinced me to move here and help her with the seahorse business.
And six years later, now it's all worthwhile, right?
Well, I came in about a year and a half ago, so again, I'm riding her coattails.
So it's been a fun year and a half. You got there just to acclimate before COVID so you got locked in?
Yes.
What did you ask Jimmy?
So where are you guys based out of? where's your warehouse? Are you working out of your basement? Back of a car down by the river? Where are you guys working at?
We have two hatchery buildings, one food stock, one is for the nursery grow out and the stock that's available for sale. The property is located on private land close by to our house. We're located in the eastern shore of Maryland, so we're near Ocean City, salisbury kind of in that region. What was the other question?
Your last four and your social security number. There you go.
So honest.
We got to edit that out.
Scrap we always ask every person on the podcast, what got you started into this wonderful hobby?
My dad kept aquariums, and so when I was born, we had a lot of aquariums, and when we moved to Michigan when I was a kid, we joined an aquarium society, and I became passionate.
I got my first saltwater aquarium in high school. It wasn't very pretty. I've learned a lot since then, and then I went to college at Salisbury University, which is our closest college year, and I interned at the Coral aquaculture facility I ended up working at and got a lot more into it from there. Got my first tank as far as the seahorses, got a pair, and it just kind of all went from there.
What made you wanted to go into business, alyssa?
I was just interested in raising the seahorses, and I tried a batch and was actually pretty successful with my first batch and working at the Coral aquaculture facility, they offered to resell them, and they sold really well, and we produced good product, and I really enjoy working with them. And we just kept at it and learned more and worked out the tweaks, and it ended up turning into a business. I didn't expect it to, but it did, and I'm happy it did.
I have so many questions about the start of the business. So when you thought, yes, you're selling, what was the first thought that you're going to sell them online, you're going to sell them in person, you're going to sell in trade shows. How did that first business step work for you?
I wanted to sell them online because that's how we were selling at the other Coral aquaculture facility. So I was used to that market and shipping and everything like that. I learned a lot from them, and I've always just kind of stuck with that, breeding them. It's kind of hard to travel, so we don't go to a lot of trade shows, but we have gone to.
Some to get more questions of seahorses initially. Again, we're talking about shipping. I always think fish shipping is one of the most delicate procedures for certain fish, that you have to go through different heat packs, all kinds of stuff. But then you have to think about the extra steps. What does it take past a normal fish being shipped to ship a seahorse? I think, number one, they have to hold on to something at least. What does it take?
They're not too much different than shipping a lot of other saltwater fish. They're in an insulated box with the heat pack. Of course, at this time of year, we do just put like an airline tubing in there for them to hold onto. They don't always have to hitch, but they do enjoy hitching to something when they want to rest. But, I mean, they ship super well, and other than that, it's not anything super special.
So what extremes can you go to when you're shipping? I mean, up here in Minnesota right now, today, it's ten degrees above zero. At what point do you just kind of shut it down where it's just too cold to ship or too hot?
If it's the single digits, we'll ask people if we can ship it as a hold for pickup. That way it doesn't have to go out in the truck and that helps out a lot. As long as it's above single digits, we'll ship. They're estuary fish and they're used to a pretty big range of temperatures, so they do handle getting cool pretty easily. More so in the summertime. We don't want to get too hot, but of course we just pack with an ice pack. Like I said, they can handle a pretty wide range of temperature. They're not too sensitive with shipping.
So what's your preferred method of shipping out? Do you like fedex, Ups, santa's reindeer? I don't know. What do you use?
We primarily use Ups priority overnight. We do have the option where we can ship fedex, and in some areas fedex is better for people and vice versa. Some areas of Ups is better, so we kind of take a look at that as well. But we primarily do use Ups for.
Shipping priority overnight, and that's usually a priority overnight product. What's the average bot cost for somebody you're shipping across the country to? I know a lot of people are going to be asking that, because that's the first question, is how much is going to cost me for shipping?
This is all coming up due to COVID. We had an episode about this, talking about different costs and how everything's escalating. So at the moment, we have people just trying to get a feel for different markets. And we feel that yours definitely has a unique taste. So just a little background.
So shipping, we charge a flat rate of $40 for shipping, unless you're in Hawaii and then you you sort of pay whatever the published rate for Hawaii is. And Hawaii does require a permit, but for the most continental Us, it's $40 flat rate.
See, that's not a bad price at all. How big of a box and how many can you ship in a box? That's going to be the next question somebody's going to ask.
We can ship a bunch in a box. We have all different box sizes, so it doesn't matter how many they get, as long as it fits in one box. It's the same shipping wonderful well.
Now for more more care. So what are the, the best parameters that you have luck with seahorses? Again, coming from the outside, I'm completely blank canvas on understanding seahorses.
So we recommend a minimum of a 30 gallon aquarium and for any additional pair that you want, we recommend an additional 15 gallons. So if you wanted to keep four seahorses, two pairs, we would recommend like a 45 gallon aquarium. Now, like with any aquariums, if you want to have a less of a stocking density, that helps a lot with your stability. I think the one thing people don't realize about seahorses, and if you have a lot of freshwater people and they're dirtier than goldfish, part of the tank size also sort of requires on what kind of filtration that you're using. We have some customers that just use hang on the back filters. We have other customers that have sumps and protein skimmers. So if you're going to have a sump and protein skimmer, it's going to be a lot easier to do higher densities. If you're going to just have hang on the back filtration, it might be better to have a little bit lower density. So you kind of got to play it by here in that regard. But generally we recommend a minimum of 30 gallons and 15 for every additional pair. Temperature wise. Seahorses, even some of the more tropical species sort of shift. They move sort of laterally based on the temperature. So we recommend keeping them around like 72 degrees plus or minus. It's a little hotter, it doesn't hurt. But if you're in a situation where your room that you're keeping the tank in isn't well temperature controlled, you may need a chiller. Is that a question?
I was going to say you said that there's a plus or minus there. How hardy do you think they are? Because again, any fish can withstand gradual change. So it's not shocking that I'm asking about, but what's some of the lowest ranges and highest ranges you've seen seahorses be comfortable at?
So we primarily produce and what most of our customers are keeping is hippocampus erectus. That's a hearty species and what's commonly available in the trade. As far as those, we keep them at about 70 to 74 degrees fahrenheit. And we really highly recommend keeping them in that range. They can get quite a bit cooler and if they get a little warmer a day here and there, it's usually not a big deal. But you get different bacteria such as vibrio and things that they can be susceptible to that grow at higher rates at higher temperatures. So keeping it in that lower 70 to 74 degrees range is super important for long term success and keeping them healthy.
Got you. So is there any particular species that can withstand like, cooler temperatures beyond that range? I know we have a lot of cold water marine fans. I know that seahorses are probably. Out of sight of the cold water marine environment. But is there like a particular species that can stand a little cooler than most?
Pot belly seahorses abdominals is an Australian native species and they're huge. They get to be about twelve inches and those guys are cold water species. Most people are keeping those at 60 to 65 degrees fahrenheit and some even cooler. And that's definitely one you really don't want to keep them above 65 degrees fahrenheit. So that would be perfect for them. They're awesome. It's not a species we work with, but one I would like to that's.
A huge creature for sure. I did not expect to see horse being that big.
I want to go back real bad. Earlier, kapil said that they produce a lot of waste and that surprised me actually.
Me too. I figured they'd be more delicate and they wouldn't necessarily create a lot. But is it waste? Why they're dirty or is it behavior?
It's mostly I think the waste is why they're kind of like dirty is that they do they do poop a lot and they produce pretty big turns. A lot of our seahorses, all the sea horses in the farm are kept bare bottoms and we do have them a little bit dense so it's easier for us to sort of see the poop. And I've worked with a lot of different fish and I would have to say they are probably one of the poopiest fish I've ever worked with.
That's incredible. So what kind of a diet do you have these fish or these seahorses on that they are pooping like ribs? No, I will take a dozen seahorses right now. mc ribs are wonderful.
No, but honestly, what do they feed on and how often do you feed them?
So for all of our larger species we do work with dwarf seahorses and those are kind of a whole different creature in and of themselves. But for all the larger species of seahorses we work with, they're eating frozen mice shrimp and we're feeding them at least twice a day at the farm. We're feeding them about four times a day. But what we recommend to other keepers is about twice a day once they're ready to ship out from here.
Maybe this is species specific. I heard that a lot of seahorses require live food only. Just hearing that you're doing frozen makes it so much more attainable in my mind than like hatching brine shrimp or something else.
Yes, that's something we commonly hear being captive bread. We get them on a frozen mice shrimp here from a really young age. A lot of that comes from what used to be available in the trade, which is primarily wild caught seahorses. And in general they're more picky with eating a little more stressed to being brought into captivity. And they're not going to take to prepared food as quickly as our captive bred sea or Sazar once they're ready to ship out from here. They've been on frozen mice shrimp for at least three months, so they're used to it, and that's all they're getting here. And they do very well on that. It's also super nutritious, and it's very.
High in protein, isn't it?
It is.
It's all protein. So they make the MCRIB out of what you got.
Adam Mcmis is there a specific brand of mice shrimp? Because I know different brands of frozen food have different, like, grades of mysis, like, sizes and everything. Is there a specific brand that you guys feed yours?
We primarily feed two brands. We feed python energetics, canadian myces, and we also feed I think it's what their regular mesa shrimp. It is a little bit smaller. A lot of our brood stock gets the piscene energetics. It is fattier, it is bigger. So for those individuals that are producing a lot of eggs and babies, it's a good food for them. But all the younger pretty much raised on the hikari food. Those are the two brands we recommend and partially and there's probably other really good brands out there, but for us, they tend to be the cleanest and arrived the freshest out of most of the mice that we sort of see. We do prefer buying them in flat packs versus cubes. The cubes tend to be kind of cut up in pieces. There's a lot of little pieces. If you're kind of feeding cubes in, like, a more community tank, there's a lot of things in there that will eat the smaller pieces. But generally, those are the two brands that we feed. I know hikari does have other types of mice in there. We don't feed those other types. We just feed the small, regular type.
Okay, you don't feed like, the spirulina or anything like that.
Once they get on mysis shrimp, they're exclusively on mysa shrimp. If you do want to give a little bit of just diversity, you could give them some barn chip that's enriched with spyolina or pacific plankton. But generally, mysis has all the nutrition that they need. Sometimes with their breeders, we do take live brine trim, and we do sell in a food enrichment on our website. And so we'll enrich them for about 24 hours or so. And sometimes we'll give our breeders, breeders some of that, but we're basically taking, like, what reptile people do with crickets and kind of gut loading them and giving it just brine trimp by itself isn't a very nutritious food.
So there's no people trying to do like, a micro pellet or something that's intended for seahorses. I'm assuming that, again, like you said, mice shrimp have their full balance, so using anything else would be risky.
It sounds like the issue with having sort of like a pellet or a flake, at least with the pellet, is they have a very specialized sort of jaw, and I think it would be very difficult for them to go after that. I have had tanks in the past where I did have other fish in there. And I put some high quality marine flakes in there that were a mysis based flake. And the seahorses looked interested, but they just ignored it. They would look at it, and then they would kind of get close to it, and then they would just swim away. This is a Mick rib sandwich knock off.
There's nothing better than the original. So my introduction to seahorses many years ago, there used to be an ad, like, in the back of Outdoor Magazine stuff, and they would sell dwarf seahorses from Coral gables, Florida. And I don't know if that place is still open or not, but they would ship it to you through the mail. And my mom actually bought them for me, and I had very good luck. I kept them for a long time in a goddamn bowl. I mean, I didn't even have them. Yeah, you ordered the seahorses. It came with a plastic bowl, and you would take a little tiny cup and you would drop the water in just to kind of oxygen the water. And I had very success. I kept them for a good long time.
You're kidding. How big was this bowl?
I would say it's probably half gallon, tops.
And I'm assuming there's no heat on that.
No, it's sat on the counter just like a fishbowl would, and that's how they sold them back then.
It's just fishbowl seahorses.
Right. And the big thing was, I think it was like 795, and they would send you a pregnant father's seahorse and a female. I think you got a pair for 795 like that. And I actually did have little babies. And then you would take and put the brine shrimp eggs on top of the water, and then they would hatch. That's how basic bare bones it was back in the day.
So I'm assuming you did. Water changes continually.
You know, it's salt water. So no, you didn't do a whole lot because you had no salt water. They didn't send you, like, extra salt packets at that time.
How in the world did this work?
I did read Dwarf Seahorses, and they're hardier ish.
They were apparently some super dwarf seahorses from another planet.
I mean, if you go online right now, you can type in Dwarf Seahorses, Coral gables, Florida, and you'll see that ad, you can go in the back of your Outdoor Life magazine, back of your ranger Rick magazine.
Ranger Rick. ranger Rick was like some 1950 shit right now that you're talking about.
Dude.
I'm going to just interject here that alyssa is going to make fun of me for this. My first door sea horses did come from Coral gables, and it was a while ago, but no comment other than that.
Yeah. suck at robs.
It was a hot minute. No, I mean, those are listening, do they not? Put your seahorses in a jar bowl or any other thing.
It rocked. But back in the day, that was your freaking entertainment because we didn't have nintendoes. All we had was pay phone booths to play in and stuff like that. And they're young whipper snappers, but yeah.
They wonder why you set the cornfield on fire.
You do what you do to have fun. I grew up in rural North Dakota, and there wasn't a pet store within 100 miles of us at the time.
So you kept dwarf seahorses in a jar?
I also very successfully had sea monkeys also.
Did you?
I had sea monkeys. I had darf seahorses, and I did order those quail eggs that came with a little incubator, and I hatched quail eggs.
I really needed to hear more about your childhood.
Yeah, I grew up in a school.
I want to know where the magnifying glass and the ants started coming in to play.
No, that's not me.
That's not you?
No.
Sounds like robs.
Okay, let's talk a minute about the differences between a normal seahorse and a dwarf seahorse. Please explain that to me.
The erectus seahorses are larger species, but they're also native to Florida. They all come all the way up the coast. Actually, hippocampus zoster is the dwarf seahorses, which is what he kept in his bowl. We do work with those guys, too. They're smaller. We don't get them on any frozen food because they do kind of have a quick metabolism and they need to continuously eat. And you can't just leave frozen food in an aquarium all day, just like seafood that you and I eat. It's going to spoil pretty quickly and fowl up the water and possibly get them sick, too. So we just feed them live enriched artemia napoli, the baby brine shrimp. Sea monkeys, like he was saying. Yeah, they're just the smaller species. They only reach about an inch and a half in size.
That is tiny.
They're tiny beings are small. It's not a high biolude. And with the live food in there, it's not going to balance the water too quickly or anything. So in low density, they can be fairly easy to keep. It's just the live food you have to hatch out, and that can be a little bit of work for some people.
I just want to put out there that we need to have a T shirt made for the next round. That bull shaming is okay.
Bull shaming is okay, yes, that's what we need. I think we should get a T shirt.
We do recommend putting a filtration in your dwarf seahorse team, Jimmy. It will make experience a lot better.
Well, this is before electricity.
A lot of our customers like to use, like, small all in one aquariums. They may put a little screen on the intake or outtakes, but that's generally how people are keeping them now.
Sure.
It just allows the live food to recirculate so they can eat all day long.
Another question that I have since we're on the idea of filtration, is flow. I've always been told that seahorses have a particular need of slow flow, and if you have too much, it's going to kill them. If you don't have enough, they're not going to like it. Is this at all true? If so, what's the correct amount of flow?
So I'm going to quickly start with a little bit of a story. When I got back into seahorses, I sent a picture or video of my tank to alyssa and she told me I needed to increase my flow. And I go, seahorses don't require flow. And then she sends me a video with water blasting and 200 gallon aquarium full of these hippocampus erectus seahorses. So seahorses are found in areas that do have high flow a lot of times in the past through the supply chain. They are kept in low flow, and some aquaculture facilities overseas do keep them in low flow. So you don't want to just blast your seahorses with a wavemaker, but it does help to slowly increase the speed of your wavemaker and get the flow in there. With any aquarium, the flow sort of helps move waste and poop out of sort of dead zones or potential dead zones and get some more process.
So what if you had the ability, right, if you're going to do this in a perfect environment, to control the flow on a schedule? For instance, nighttime they have a little slower flow. In the daytime, it's a damn hurricane and they're holding on for dear life. Is that what kind of like if.
You have a power head on there, you just want to keep it covered so that they don't grab onto it and get hurt. But they are smart animals, so you want to have direct flow so they learn where the higher flow area is and they'll get caught off guard by it a couple of times and they won't do that again. But you do want to keep it consistent throughout the day just so that they know where that high flow area is and they're not getting caught off guard, but they'll learn. And you just want to make sure you have areas that they can rest to that are not as fast moving.
So having like flow schedules doesn't help. You just want to keep it consistent, make sure that you're hitting the dead spots and then giving some slower flow areas so they can rest.
That's what we recommend. I mean, if you're doing a big cleaning and you want to ramp up the flow and you're keeping an eye on them, that doesn't hurt. Just to make sure things aren't settling in the aquarium. But in general, you want to keep it consistent.
Do you need to keep decor or certain live things in the tank so they can grasp on to what type of scenery are you looking at the tank for? A seahorse, because I'm assuming again they have the wonderful monkey like tail. Do you keep certain decorations, especially farming them? You're not doing it to look good. You're doing them for raising and brooding seahorses. What do you recommend in a tank?
There's a lot of different options. They are sitting weight predators, so you're right, they use their tail and they hold on and they need to rest and have plenty of things to hold on to. And what we call it is hitch. A lot of our customers have soft corals in the aquarium, such as gorgonian, leather corals, even. Some people use macroalgae and those hitch, natural hitching posts that you can keep them with. Other people just keep it simple and just use artificial corals. There's a lot that actually look pretty realistic these days that are nice if you can get brighter colors if they're artificial, which will promote better color duration with your sea horses, since they can change color, which isn't something we've talked about yet, but having nice bright colors in there will help color them up for everybody.
I just love that to death. You actually said hitch up. This is the best thing. So do you ever dress up in a cowboy uniform for PR campaigns?
I've tried to get alyssa to do that, but she refuses.
Hey, you could be the marvel, man.
Put some chaps on.
Just saying this goes both ways.
I'm going to just say alyssa is the better looking of us too, so I might scare customers away.
Way to be a team player.
Well, don't wear the assist chaps. That's all I can say. From Coral gables, Florida, you could pay an extra dollar and they'd send you a free hitching post. They charge you a dollar. It would say something like, free hitching post, dollar extra, something like that. But it was a little tiny, it looks like remember the westerns when you'd come up and you tie your horse to that little thing? In all the westerns, they'd have like a rain and they wrap the reins around and stuff and it hit kind of a little thing like that made out of plastic. It was probably about an inch and a half wide and they would just kind of wrap their tail around the fence.
Wow.
But it was an extra dollar. Wow.
One thing too, with some of the artificial decor is you want to be careful. Like, I wouldn't use like a fake kabamba plant. Tends to trap detritus and food and just become sort of like a cesspool of stuff in a seahorse tank, things that are sort of smooth surfaces. Another thing that people will use is yellow plastic chain link.
That's pretty much what we use here. It's just plastic yellow chain that's from lowe's or Home depot. And we just anchor it down with coral frag plugs. Or some of our customers will just kind of like tuck it under the live rock or weigh it down with pvc, but that works out well, too.
And it's cheap, and that floats naturally, doesn't it?
It does, yeah.
You said liverock. When I was keeping seahorses, they advised no live rock. Well, that was when we also got live rock that had actual live critters in it. That was really cool.
Well, that also because there's octopus and babbitt bobbit worms.
Bobbitt, yeah. Remember lorena bobbitt worm.
No.
Okay, we'll talk about that.
I googled it after you told me about that, by the way, and go fluke yourself.
Terrible thing.
It's a terrible thing.
Cringe does not explain that. meme.
I just want to say that when I was down in Tampa, Florida, about ten years ago, my salesperson, Julie, took us to an area, and we went snorkeling, where there is live dwarf seahorses amongst the plants, I guess, and they were in a lot of current, actually. It was right by the mouth of a river, so it was almost brackish, and they were in there by the hundreds, and it was very fascinating, and I actually wasn't paying attention. I was looking at all these different seahorses, and I actually kind of got pushed out away from where we were at by about 30, 40ft, and all of a sudden, like, holy crap, where did everybody go? But there was a whole lot of current going through there, and that was just by the south, by the Gibson Tampa area. And it's very cool if you can find them out in the wild natural habitat.
So two notes, right? One, I'm just imagining you sitting there like, man, I wish I had a jar right now. And two, who says I didn't have a job? After you paddled back in, when was the coronary? Do you feel like you ate for Mcgribs after that paddle?
No, there was no coronary, but there's a little kid on the side of the beach going, look, manatees. manatees.
No, you don't eat lettuce.
That is correct. I do not eat lettuce. So I crawled out of the water and I punched him.
Clearly.
Yeah, clearly.
Throw a punch.
Yeah. I mean, he was seven years old. He had it coming.
Is there anything else?
All right.
As far as seahorse's delicacy, what do you have to worry about as far as things in the tank? Like, for instance, with loaches and freshwater environment, we can't use copper. We can't treat for things like IC with traditional means, we have to use stuff like uv filters. Is there any abnormal susceptibility to certain seahorses?
They're not too specific medications in most aquariums that people are keeping them in, though if you did need to use a medication, we would recommend moving them to a hospital tank and using that there rather than the display tank. The biggest thing is you just want to avoid stinging corals, such as, like Euphelia or galaxia, ones that have a very strong sting or very big lps that could possibly eat them. They are slow moving and they can get stung unlike other fish, as well as just being careful with what other tank mates you keep them with, you would just want to keep them with small peaceful fish such as gobies. You don't want to keep them with big yellow tangs or angel fish or things that could out compete them for food or stress them or possibly pick at them because they are slow moving and you want to make sure they're getting plenty to eat and not competing with the other tank mates. You really want to make sure that the aquarium is a seahorse aquarium and the inhabitants and there are safe to keep with them and peaceful. So you wouldn't want to put them in a mixed reef tank, but nothing.
That they're like, oh, you can't use this because they'll turn purple and die. Other than pennies.
One of the medications that we do like to use at the farm is formalin and that seems to be something that preach a lot of the common issues that seahorses tend to get. So that's what we do. We don't really use copper on seahorses. I've used it in the past a couple of times and one time I did lose a seahorse, but formally is usually something that sort of treats some of the same stuff copper will, but it's a lot friendlier for the seahorses.
They're not like a lot of other marine fish either where you see a lot of like ics. It's not that they can't get ick but it's not common with them so it's not really something you see pop up with them too much.
We don't prefer to use antibiotics with seahorses, I've seen it done successfully but in a lot of the cases that we've had in the past, it seems to be better to just remove the seahorse out of the environment and put it in a hospital tank and that seems to be a really big help for it. Also, water quality is probably the most important preventative thing. If you can keep good water quality weekly water changes that will prevent a lot of bacterial and even protozoan things from affecting your seahorses. Keeping that water clean is probably the one of the biggest things I can really recommend anybody keeping seahorses. Sure.
So we actually have a segue here. One of our listeners is listening live in the podcast right now. messaged how do you get rid of bacterial infection in seahorses? Also, greetings from Cold Water Fish group on Facebook. So any other specific recommendations for bacterial.
Most seahorses, if they're healthy, I wouldn't recommend just treating them if you think that they have a bacterial infection most of the time. feron two, which is nitrofurzone, is what will most commonly help with most related bacterial infections with sea horses. But of course we would recommend doing that in the hospital tank. We just simply follow the manufacturer's instructions. As far as dosage, and it usually takes up to ten days. But you want to keep complete the ten days, as well as keep them in the antibiotics for at least 14 days. If you're still seeing an issue, if it's still not cleared up after, then you'd probably want to switch to a different antibiotic.
Now, this may sound really strange. So your antibiotic doesn't go well and your seahorse passes away. You can take the Dead Seahorse and lay it out flat on a piece of paper and dry it out. Listen to me. I was down in Florida, and I went to a place that sold seashells, and they had some very big, large, beautiful seahorses. And I went, oh, that's really cool. She goes, yeah, that's natural. They just they dry out like that. They put some sort of like like a fingernail polish type material on top of them stuff, and they become somebody's wall hanging. Have you ever heard of this?
Okay, Jimmy, you talk with them. I'm going to grab you something. I'll be right back. All right, you continue the podcast.
I will do that. But have you guys heard of that?
He just abandoned ships.
He's going to go find a roof.
A lot of even your freshwater fish and marine fish, you can always dry them up if you're in a ventilated or in hot environment.
Some of our customers will do that after they pass just to keep them rather than burying them.
We usually do not do that here.
Yeah, but it just thoroughly amazed me that people are actually hanging dead seahorses on their wall as decorations and don't even realize when they're buying them that they're actually dead seahorses.
So, Jimmy, just to let you know, you explain the situation, right? Yeah, I cleaned up one of my aquariums and sold it. That was leaking. They're going to reseal it, the whole thing. And in the back I saw dead guppy. No. This is my Free willy placo. He dried up like a chip.
Oh, my God.
He looks like one of those Dead seahorses.
He does.
I didn't even know where he went. I just lost him. It was an albino Bristol in those placo. And let me tell you, it is a perfectly maintained skeleton. Like the seahorse.
Yes.
So I now, as you're telling me, need to hang this on my wall in honor of what they do with seahorses. So we're going to name it Clearance, and it's going to be on the podcast table now, staring at you for that horrible instruction to our listeners.
I think we should sell these. And you just add water, and then they like instant monkeys make a moldy petri dish.
Sadist.
This is wonderful. I hope everybody is watching how Rob has killed his pleco. But yeah, I just thought it was very interesting that people had done that.
It jumped out. What can you do?
Free willy.
Also, cool thing is, Bristol knows placos'have that it's almost like a mace on the side of their gills, right. You don't really notice it until they dry up. You can just see just the incredible spike work on the sides of their cheeks.
You wait till I die and you'll see how great my hair is actually.
It's going to be a skeleton with.
Just your hair just prop me up in the corner when I'm dead and it'll make a great conversation.
Piece a curl up your tail. We'll put you on a wall.
There you go. Get a big nail, though. I'm pretty fat.
This is horrible.
Oh, boy.
Where do we go from here? Get away from Dead Sea Horse.
Let's talk about breeding seahorses.
Yes, let's go to something fun. So breeding seahorses, by far, if you've never done seahorses, has to be the most confusing thing. Right. We've seen that a lot of in the fish kingdom, the males take care of the babies. But please explain to us how you go through the process and how it's like one of the funnest things that the aquarium community has to offer is breeding seahorses.
Seahorses with a breeding tank. I've seen them breed in about anything and even tanks smaller than we sort of recommend. They are seasonal breeders. They seem to breed around the spring and summer a little bit more, usually spring, but they will breed throughout the year. One common misconception is that they mate for life. I will say that is not true at all.
Definitely not in captivity. I don't think it probably is for their natural environment either. But that's one thing that everybody always thinks that they mate for life and they definitely don't hear and I think that it's probably unlikely that they do in their natural environment as well.
Get it where you can.
Pretty much.
We do keep our breeding seahorses in groups here. They are a social creature, I think, like keeping sick with. They're really fun to watch in groups. The males do show off to each other and show off to the females. Usually they do this little dance and they go up and down.
We need to warn our listeners, make.
A little to get down tonight.
Viewer discretion advice.
And the male will transfer the eggs or sorry, the female will transfer the eggs into the male's pouch. That's how you stack them. There's a noticeable pouch, kind of like a kangaroo on a male seahorse and a female transfer the eggs into that pouch. The male will fertilize them when they're in the pouch and the eggs eventually actually implant in the male's pouch and.
Develop the true male pregnancy. That's why they're the best animals in the world.
Clearly. Bite me.
I think they signed the deal with the devil and got screwed, honestly.
I agree with Capille.
Depending on the species, but on average I would say it's around 18 days.
They erect us most of the time they carry the fry for. About 17 to 21 days. It's a little bit temperature dependent as well as individually dependent, like all fish.
A sub population of erectus that's from the more northern regions. And those seem to have less time before the pregnancy. But 18 to about 21 days, they.
Should see a doctor. If you're a rectus for 18 days, people see a doctor.
I think it's 4 hours is the limit.
4 hours? Yeah, definitely. If it's 18 days, you want to get that fixed.
No comment.
There we go. Come on, Capille. I was on Team Capeal for a while, but now I'm off.
We only have functional wreck in this farm.
Wonderful. How many do you get out of a batch?
Okay, take it that the whole dance goes. Sometimes tea time, sometimes the email will transfer.
Sorry, I got to know what this dance? Right? I picked on Adam for this.
We've seen this on TikTok, right?
He calls it the happy dance. And I'm feeling like there's not an actual name for this. Is it just like some ritual or are we literally is it common to call it the Happy Dance?
I've never referred to it as the Happy Dance, but usually in scientific literature it's called courting behavior or mating behavior.
I had to use small words for Rob.
Thank you.
Adam knows a lot about mating behavior, don't you?
There five or four anyways. Yeah, just continue. How many do you get in a batch?
It all depends. You can get anywhere from like ten babies to I think what was 1000 was your highest batch?
I think we have some pretty big batches. Our largest batch is close to 2000.
For real? That is freaking phenomenal.
That's a lot of mouths to feed.
How is the mortality rate most of them live?
It depends. I mean, every batch is a little different. We definitely try to shoot for over 90% survival rates. I would say most of the time we're pretty close to that. Some batches are weaker than others and you don't always have that high success rates. But if the brute stock is well conditioned, we can have pretty high success rates with them.
Say this particular pair that laid 1000 babies, do they breed more than once a year?
Oh, yes, they breed every the day they give birth. They usually breed again within a day.
Now, you know, they have multiple buildings.
Some of them will breed all year long and produce one batch. Some will produce three or four batches and then take a break. It varies.
We have some that just don't produce in our freeloaders.
Yeah, we have quite a few of those.
When you say you keep them in groups and then they pick the groups, they don't mate for life in the in captivity like this. Have you tried mixing them around like parrots? I know with parrot breeding you have to put multiple males and multiple females and they pick their own mate have you tried that with the seahorses to see if you could get the freeloaders to pick a new mate and see if they want to hook up with somebody else? Or is this when you put them in a group in a tank, you just literally keep them in that group in that tank? There's no transfer.
It depends. We try and keep on the group together just mostly for biosecurity reasons. But if we do have some that are being a little picky, we will move them. We also just move them to a different tank pretty much quarterly. That way we can leach out the system that they're in and put them in a fresh new system just to keep biofilms and that kind of stuff out of our plumbing and whatnot. So usually once we move them, it does kind of like we'll get some pairs to change it up and maybe some pairs that weren't breeding before, it might get them going. They're one of those things that's just sometimes we'll try and figure everything out and they can be a little bit unpredictable with their behavior. And I think that's just probably true for a lot of different fish, but especially the seahorses.
I mean, sometimes we'll add a couple of males to the group and that gets the old fart. Males.
Yeah, that usually gets them feisty.
There's some action that goes on after that.
So you're bringing some competition and they have a dance off.
Pretty much.
This is just like foot loose, man.
I feel like there needs to be a Kevin bacon version of a seahawk.
There should be.
I mean, that would fly off the shelves clearly.
Exactly.
Also, we have a question, and I don't want this answered because I giggled in the middle from one of the listeners. They asked, where can I find an erectus in the southern regions? So we're not answering that.
That was from a listener.
Florida.
Okay.
There you go.
They do have the best strip clubs. Okay.
And one other question about this. Have you tried taking water from a really good breeding tank and dumping it into the other one, or that's biosecurity reasons for that, too?
That's a good question. We have had some of our erectus seahorses when they give birth, and it kind of tends to make everybody else in the same system go a little crazy with courting and everything. So there's definitely something to that. I have tried that where two systems that I'm comfortable with mixing the water with and it does kind of get them courting more and showing more behavior and everything. I wouldn't say it's like 100%, but I do think there is something to that.
Do you feel like they release hormones and gets everybody else excited?
I think so. I do the female while the male's pregnant is working on ripening the next clutch of eggs. And pretty much as soon as he gives birth, that clutch of eggs is ready. So I don't know if there's something where he's letting her know qy that he's ready and whatnot. So I think they do probably put something off when they give birth, but I don't know that that's studied and I'm not sure what it would be.
It is with angel fish. I used to read a lot of angel fish, and that definitely is true. You get one pair going and it gets everybody excited because the hormones in the water and whatnot definitely what is the gestation period, how long do they carry the the eggs?
About 18 to 21 days.
Oh, it is okay, I just thought I heard it wrong.
It varies for species too. But as far as the erectus seahorses that we work with, primarily, it's about 18 to 21 days.
So, one thing I'd like to bring up, and it's probably the biggest misconception of seahorses, and if alyssa ever goes bald, it might be because of this misconception, is seahorse color is not fixed similar to chameleons. They can change colors, and they can change colors also when they're unhappy, but usually basically towards their backgrounds. I've had some seahorses, a different color all the time, and some seahorses that seem to like certain colors. Colors like red and orange are not really that common, and particularly are not that common in captive red sea horses. And I think it might be something with some of the diet that they have in the wild. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Usually when people order seahorses from us, they'll ask, can you give me the yellow ones? All the seahorses can turn yellow. We can send you a yellow seahorse and they can arrive yellow to you. Sometimes we can send you a yellow seahorse and it can arrive black or gray or variety of different sort of colors and patterns. A lot of the erectus seahorses that we work with, as well as many species, have these stripes along their back that are usually white. And the layman's term for those stripes are called saddles. And so the saddling is fixed. That doesn't change. Some seahorses have crazy patterns. Another thing that happens with seahorses, they'll get these surrey, which are these like sort of seaweedlike appendages, and that's not even a fixed like we'll have them show up in some of our tanks, and you can actually request ones with siri on your order, but I can't guarantee that those appendages are going to stay. You will see sea horses develop them later on or lose them. So that's a really interesting thing. With the sea horses, even like chameleons, they can kind of rotate their eyes and kind of look around.
That's what I described.
They're pretty much chameleon of the sea.
I see on here a lot of different color patterns and varieties. Some of them almost look like they have almost like how do you put that crust on them? Is that just coloration? Or is that like some part of growth on older seahorses?
That's the saddling market that you're seeing and it does develop more as they age, usually for most individuals. Some have a lot of it, some don't have very much of it at all but it's just a natural marking.
On them and how long can you expect your seahorse to live? What's the average lifespan?
With proper care, most of the larger species will live about four to seven years. We've had some hobbyists report them living over twelve years so they can live quite a while.
That's incredible.
So what's on the prices to get in this hobby? What's your average price? Because again, you sell seahorses on seahorsevy.com so what is your price range goal for seahorses?
I think sort of single seahorses I start around like $99 and if you buy a hair the price goes down. You buy a four, the price goes down even more. So the seahorses that we tend to have in stock are hippocampus erectus. They are probably the most productive seahorses in captivity and they are very hardy and they seem to do really well in a lot of other countries they're not as available as they are in the Us. And we work with two different sub populations. We work with sort of what we call the saddle directive which is the sort of the southern sub population that occurs in the Florida seas in the Gulf of Mexico. They have the ability to get larger, they are a little bit slower growing and then the northern sub population is what we call the northern ireactive. They tend to be a little bit smaller, their morphology is a little bit more stout they are probably the most active seahorses in our personal seahorse reef that's what we have displayed. We really just like that species. They are also a lot easier to breed than the southerns are even though the southerns are pretty easy to breed. They will go through all the different sort of color patterns as you'll see the southerns go with but they're just a cool seahorse. They're just always very active, they're always moving, they're always flirting with each other, showing off. That's probably becoming probably our most popular seahorse that we're selling. We do sometimes sell hippocampus combs or what they call a tiger tail seahorse which is a species that's native to Vietnam, the Philippines and that sort of area of the indopacific. They are growing up a species. They do have some really wild color changes, but in terms of production, we don't get huge numbers of those. So we don't always have those available. I don't think we currently have them available. And then the other seahorse that we do sell are Hippocampus Red Eye and we sell the Brazilian sub population of those. And that's probably one of the more sought after seahorses.
That's what everybody wants right now, nobody has them available.
Yeah and they are a little bit colorful but they are really weird about reading. They'll either just start reading and then they'll just stop. So we don't always have those available and that's probably the more expensive seahorse that we sell. We also do sell hybrids between the erectus and the redive.
I did not know you could do that.
Flower horn seahorses. The one interesting thing about hybrids there was a study done in Florida where they did look at the erectus populations and the red eye population. So they do overlap in population and they did notice that in some parts of their range there was some level of hybridization going on and that the erectus naturally has some red eye genes in them. One thing about the hybrid seahorse is if you breathe two hybrids together, we don't know of anybody that has produced any viable offspring with those. But if you take a hybrid and you breed it to the parent species, we've heard of people having success with getting viable offspring from so that's another sort of cool species. And then we are trying to work with hippocampus cuda but we're still growing those guys out. So that's hopefully another species that used to be a lot more common in the market that we would like to sort of bring back. And then we do work with the dwarfs of the hippocampus astray and those are the ones that keep in your pico or nano tanks.
Now, how often do you guys bring in new stock? Do you do it a couple of times a year or do you do it continuously as you find it available? Because I know some of the stuff is very hard to find.
The erectus, we pretty much bring in a new group of those every year, which is kind of what's worked out well for us and our pattern of rotating and everything like that. As far as other species, it's kind of just what's available. Being that they're citing appendix too, there's just not a whole lot of imports, especially this year. So it's just pretty much what's available. If we see something unique that we think would be a good fit to our breeding program and they're a different species other than erectus, we'll usually grab it when they're available because you don't see them available too often. But we're pretty careful with what we're bringing in and where we're bringing it in from.
Do you have like a quarantine area for these?
We do. We definitely they're in quarantine for at least six months before they enter our breeding program. They're dewormed and we use the formula on them that takes care of a lot of possible external parasites and whatnot and even if they're not having an issue, we'll go ahead and do that. I don't use antibiotics on them unless there's a bacterial problem, but usually if we need to use antibiotics on something, they're probably not going to end up being breeding stock for us.
So another question would be if I'm trying to get set up seahorses for the first time, is it best to keep just a pair together or you said they're very social. Can I just have one and have a happy seahorse? Is it like some garami species seem to be okay with even just one in a tank?
We usually recommend that you have at least two individuals because they do kind of feed off of each other as far as confidence and everything. And they can be a little lonely if you just have one and shy. Usually if you have two, they'll kind of feed off of each other's behavior and become more active and confident and more bold in the aquarium. And like we said, they are very social, so we recommend having a buddy for them.
Do you ever have any that are aggressive to the point where they hurt other seahorses?
That's a good question. Some of the males can kind of chase each other around when they're feeling frisky and displaying and everything. Especially around the full moon. We'll see them get quite spicy around. I can always tell it's a full moon just by seeing that behavior with them or they're actually snicking at each other and chasing each other around. But I mean, they're peaceful fish. They're not aggressive or anything. They're not going to hurt each other. It can be kind of alarming when you see that behavior. But we've never had them hurt each other or anything like that. It's not something we worry about.
Now, another question. Earlier you talked about tank mates, and I know I've heard of people like keep pipe fish. As a tank mate, what do you suggest to keep in your seahorse tank?
You can keep pipe fish with them. They are a good tank mate for them. You do want to be careful with what pipefish you keep with them because they're so closely related to seahorses and a lot of those are going to be wild imports that could possibly carry things that the seahorses could be more susceptible to being so closely related. We do have captive bred pipe fish, and then we also bring in some wild pipe fish that we quarantine here like we would our seahorse stock and eventually offer for sale. But as far as other tank mates besides pipe fish, different gobies, pretty much any of the small gobies that are under two and a half, three inches are fine to keep with them. Cardinal fish, a lot of our customers keep like the pajama cardinal fish with them. What else could feel?
We do recommend some of the smaller fairy rashes, leopard rashes really pretty well with them, especially since they do like some of the things yeah, with angel fish. With large angels, we would avoid some like the really small dorf angels, so that the chair of the Atlantic pygmy angels is probably the most popular one that we sell to keep with them. Clownfish. The one thing you got to be careful with clownfish is sometimes they can mature. And this is an issue with clownfish in any tank, whether it's seahorses or not. Sometimes a pair can start mating and sort of become aggressive around their territory. But crown fish are something that are kept royal dramas. What else do we sell? mandarin. boobies. mandarin. That's probably the most popular tank mate that we do sell for them. They do pretty well. The dragonets, the scooter dragonets, which is one of their cousins, does really well invert wise, smaller crabs, like emerald crabs, a lot of people have a misconception. Crabs are aggressive and some crabs are aggressive, but like emerald crabs, I might not remember the name of the ruby red crabs. The ruby red crabs and porcelain crabs. We wreck it. Hermit crab wise, we like blue legged hermit crabs. If you get small blue legged hermit crabs, sometimes your larger seahorses can eat them. I call that enrichment. We sell scarlet hermit crabs, but we have a polka dot hermit crab that works really well with them. You want to stay away from large predatory hermit crabs or any crabs. starfish wise, we have these fringe spiny starfish. They're probably the coolest starfish. I'm a fish person. Really good.
We're losing you.
Say that again.
Saying we're losing you. You're cutting out real bad.
Sorry, where did I cut out last?
I couldn't tell you. There's like, I think the last four species that you said rather than that. It sounds like there's a hallway, and I do see a list here on your website. Again, seahorsevi.com, and it looks like that you guys even have a wonderfully diverse list of seahorse safe fish that people can look through. I certainly recommend that because there's a ton of species apparently that can go seahorse. Which again, another misconception I had. Is there any type of shrimp that you would worry about with fish? Because again, I'm trying to think of everything in a saltwater community tank that might be bad for them.
Most shrimp species that you can keep in a community aquarium are fine with seahorses. If you wouldn't keep it in a standard marine community aquarium, I probably would hold off on it. One thing to be worried about is that the shrimp is really small, like sexy shrimp or some of the small, an enemy shrimp. They could potentially be food for the seahorse.
They'll just eat them right out. What about some of the other bigger shrimp? Is it just because they're potentially aggressive or what's the concern?
Usually it's bigger, sometimes with like, smaller peppermint trim. Sometimes some of the larger sea horses.
May go after them.
But generally if you're going to add trim to your tank, we recommend just sort of taking it down and putting it, placing it by the rock, and usually they seem to be fine.
So what have we missed tonight in our questions of seahorses? What fact should we know? And is this a species of fish that people should be going after as a beginner, or is this a lot of risk and work?
One piece of evidence with tank mates that I would like to bring up is mixing species of seahorses. It's really important to keep seahorses sort of species specific. The hippocampus erectus and the red eye. Seahorses are species that overlap and they seem to do fine together, but we wouldn't recommend mixing any other species. Seahorses, one or both species of seahorses seem to go downhill very quickly after mixing them. One theory is that there's just different sort of gut fauna and once that transfers to each other, they don't do so well. But seahorses as a beginner fish in the marine aquarium, a good chunk of customers start out with seahorse as the first marine fish and most of our customers are very successful at keeping seahorses.
Wonderful. So you do recommend it. It's not that just your customers get them as your first one, but you also recommend doing that?
Yes, as long as they do their research and they understand the basics of keeping a saltwater aquarium, it can definitely be their first aquarium and they can be successful. A lot of times we find them to even be very successful because they research specifically what seahorses need and they don't have other reef tank experience, so they just research exactly what the sea horses need. And there's not other things that are a little different with the reef tanks that get hung up in confusion, such as like the temperature is a big one. A lot of people that keep reef tanks are used to the warmer temperatures and that doesn't always transfer when they try sea horse, is there any particular.
Type of lighting that you have to have? Are they best kept a little bit on the dim side or would you rather just have them lit up like any other aquarium?
You can have it lit up like any other aquarium if you're not going to have live coral in there. I would probably just keep lower lighting just to help keep algae down. And you don't necessarily need the brighter light or anything, but they can take normal reef tank lighting. If you have super highlight like metal haylide, sometimes they can actually get like sort of like a suntan where they'll darken up, but that's not always true. It's based on a lot of different things as far as what color they display. But if your seahorses are super dark and you have really, really bright light, that's something you could try adjusting.
And middle headlight, you have a more wider spectrum. Like I was saying, if you have a more wider light spectrum, that can help enhance the seahorse's color versus having a very blue looking thing.
So no black lights, no disco lights, no black lights. We're not as funny as we thought.
We have quite a bit of delay on our end. But Adam, do you have any questions for these two?
You said that the saddles stay there permanently. Is this a good way of identification? And that's how you can keep track of like because I know you were saying you had some freeloaders.
You just kind of go and go.
That one didn't do anything again this week. You can go to the other tank. Do you keep, like pretty much.
I mean, they're saddling and their size. That's kind of how we identify the individuals. Definitely.
Have you been able to, with your captive breeding, pull out the ones that do that have like, say you were saying there are some that have up to 1000 babies and they have a really good mortality rate. Do you save some of the babies from that to try to breed that line or do you just kind of mix and match? Right now, for genetics, we use both.
Wild breeding stock and then F one, which is the first generation, we don't really go much further than that because we want to keep up our genetic diversity and whatnot. But we do selective breed and we'll pull ones that have desirable traits, such as growing fast, ones that are more active. Of course, everybody likes the way they look, so some that are more individually unique as far as their saddling or markings. And there's a lot of different favorable traits with them that we'll select for.
Got you. And then have you ever been able to get leafy sea dragons or any of that in that family?
We were working with weedy sea dragons. We're not currently working with them. We did see some different courting behavior with them and everything. They're a lot of fun. While we were working with them at the farm, we were not successful with breeding them, but they were definitely close. There's not very many places that are working with those guys. There's a couple of public institutions that have been successful with breeding them. I don't think in any very large numbers, but they're awesome.
Yes, they are. Those are good questions.
Those are good answers.
Thank you.
I'd asked earlier to Adam and stuff, but I don't know if you guys heard, but I know, like, with kangaroos and stuff, there are other mammals that also do the pouch thing. Is there anything else in the marine world that does the pouch thing?
Some pipefish. The males also carry the fry. They don't really have like, a true pouch, as far as I know. With most species, like the sea horses do, a lot of them will just actually carry the eggs externally on the underside. But there are some species that kind of have, like, a pouch aside from those other than, like, mouth brooders, but that's not like a pouch. I can't think of anything else. I think it's pretty much just more specific.
Even the sea dragons carry their eggs on the back of their tail.
So they're very unique in what they do.
Definitely.
Do you think it's just because the females are so damn lazy? Is that why this has happened?
Well, thanks for our 3% of female.
I was just trying to offend everybody. It is Christmas and she's got no answer for me.
There's a delay in the they're considered the most evolutionarily survived species. So the male will carry the fry while the female or carry the eggs while the fry are developing. And then he gives birth and meanwhile the female can produce the eggs and get those ready, which are energetically costly. So the male does the work while she's producing more eggs and it works out really well energy wise for them to optimize how many fry they're producing.
Species very efficient. He wouldn't should do that.
They're efficient. They know what's up. They know what's going on. I agree.
I disagree.
Well, if you are listening or interested in getting yourself into seahorses, certainly go to seahorsesavvy.com and you'll find yourself a wide variety of seahorses. Now, you did warn us to let the public know that you guys are now on vacation. The last order shipped for Christmas and you will not be shipping until the start of the next year. But certainly get your orders in ready for the beginning of the year. Seahorse savvy.com.
Alyssa, I've got one other quick question. We've got a lot of UK listeners, a lot of people from outside the country. Do you guys ship internationally by chance?
We do not ship internationally. We ship anywhere in continental Us. And we ship to Alaska and Hawaii. But we do not export at this time, unfortunately, because I don't want to.
Get that question asked after the podcast. So I thought I'd throw it out there for everybody. So just to illuminate, definitely it's one that comes up quite often.
There's also a bunch of different articles on the website too, which go over a lot of the stuff we talked about tonight in greater detail. So I definitely recommend checking those out as well.
Wonderful. Again, seahorsevi.com. Check them out. alyssa Capille, it's been fantastic having you on. Thanks so much.
Thank you very much for having us. Been fun.
Well, perfect guys. If you like what you hear, go to Aquarium guidespodcast.com on the bottom of the website. You'll find the link to give us a couple of bucks. Help support through the podcast, get the lights on, support our sponsors like Joe Shrimp shack and support Savvy Seahorses.com because they took time out of the day for us as well, but even some merch. Again, thanks so much and we will see you on the next podcast. Thanks guys for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like. This.
So they had murdered my shrimp and then, like, had a fast, over the dead corpses of my shrimp.
Maybe that's why. Maybe the slaughter and not eating the slaughter of shrimp just got them in the mood. Well, I think there's something to that.
So if you're trying to breed guidance.
For profit, just take them to your friend's house, put them in their shrimp.
Tank, feed them about $100 worth of shrimp, and sell the guidance.