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As charming as the appearance of a seahorse is the majestic and graceful way it swims. The optical attraction of these creatures is increased by the contrast of their colours to the green of the eelgrasses and seaweeds in which most of the seahorses live.

The sex of a seahorse is easy to detect: male seahorses have a pouch below the chest area.

Male seahorse

Female seahorse

Unfortunately some of the coloured seahorses turn pale by the time. A good example is the female seahorse on the photo above: at the moment of purchase she was brightly orange coloured, but now - 20 months later - she´s only quite tenderly coloured. Perhaps one reason is the unbalanced diet under aquarium conditions.

There are also other reasons for a seahorse to change its colour. Some time ago I had a rose-pink colored male in my tank. A few weeks later I purchased a bang-yellow female with small red points all over her body. The male seahorse fell in love at once for the new beauty queen - and a few days later simulated accurately her colouring - even the red points were copied! Unfortunately the male suffered from a unknown disease some months later and died. The female seahorse lived after the death of the male no more 24 hours - too largely was apparently the grief over the death of her partner.

a ghost shrimp is partially in-sucked

Immediately after aspirating the booty food remainders withdraw in form of a breath-fine nebula cloud from the sides of the seahorses head, it seems as if its head steams.

Before a seahorse catches its food however, time goes by. The seahorses watches its potential booty quite exactly. Already a few days old babies look exactly at each piece of plankton or brine shrimp before the suck it. But: If the animals made however only once their choice and the booty tries to escape, the otherwise so leisurely coming along seahorses transform suddenly into fast and agile floats chasing the potential food until they catch it.

"Did he buy these delicious living Mysis?"

Typically for the Tigertails (H. comes, picture above) is their long muzzle. Unlike many other species of seahorses the Tigertails sit for hours in front of or beneath live rocks and stick their snout into each hole and crack. They pursue booty only rarely but wait patiently for the fodder coming along.  Besides they get on other seahorses nerves by permanently hanging on them and only hardly been shaken off.

Seahorses get rid of their excrements in an elegant way by doing a 360° turn around the horizontal axis like a dancer.

Their bodies are in form of a "V" as they swim through the tank, remaining for a while at different waypoints in order to examine their neighbourhood in every detail.

Besides it they often "dance" by circling each other for a few seconds to several minutes.

While these behavior rituals seem to be of absolute priority for the male seahorses, female seahorses are substantially fewer concentrated and let themselves be easily diverted by other attractions (especially food). In such cases occasionally a kind of punishment of the female takes place, as the male snatches at the head of the female for disciplining, which probably might be rather painful. The same aggressive reaction is to be determined, if the female seahorse approaches another male. 

With the fidelity seahorses in tanks do not take it as strict as seahorses in nature, where the partnership lasts as long as their life. Keeping one male and several females in a tank, the male changes its partner again and again (in extrem cases almost daily). If there are several couples in a tank, one can observe stable linkages over a long time. After the death of the partner the surviving seahorse usually chooses a new partner, but sometimes it also dies within a few days.

Strange: If no suitable partner of the same type is available, the seahorse looks around for a seahorse of another species.

Unequal pair: H. reidi and H. comes

mating: male horse on the left

In seahorses pregnancy happens to the male animals. Within two or three weeks between 50 and 1.500 (!) seahorse babies develop inside the males pouch, which are finally living born. Frequently not all of the babies will dismiss at one time from the pouch, but in several phases over some minutes or hours, in extreme cases it takes even one or two days. Several males die a few days after birth of the ponies because of remaining dead babies in the pouch resulting in putrefaction and bacterial infection.

Many pregnancies can occur consecutively, whereby the duration of pregnancy is 2 to 5 weeks with an average of 2 to 3 weeks. In addition, it seems that there are months-long infertile periods.

There are also "false pregnancies", the males pouch seems to be filled to the maximum for a few days and suddenly is of normal constitution again.

Mating does not only occur between seahorses of the same species, but also between different species.

birth: white cloud of seahorse babies

7 month old ponie

The new generation grows up really slow during the first weeks of their life. Four months later the largest of my seahorses were about 2.5 inch long (H. reidi), whereby there were enormous growth differences. These differences seem to be in direct relationship with the individual skill of catching food. After 5 months their size is approximately 3 inch (tank conditions), after 8 months approx. 5 inch. The size of adult H. reidi is about 6 to 8 inch.

The maximum life expectancy of seahorses in nature is up to four years (depending on species), whereby sexual maturity already occurs at the age of 6 months. Nearly all of my own H. reidi died of old age. I purchased these seahorses fully-grown in adult age (1 year or older). In my tanks they lived for another 2 years and more. The oldest of my self-bred seahorses is now 21 months old.

sad: she will soon die of old age

But also other seahorses sometimes serve as a holding object.

"seahorse-chain"

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