Just thought you all might be interested in this. The female seahorse (Spotted Seahorse, Hippocampus kuda) that I bought a few weeks ago developed an excellent relationship with the bigger female seahorse in the tank. They are often seen holding each other's tails and turning pink together, which are signs that they love each other. For the past few weeks though, the newer female has been pink almost 24/7. She is now not only pink when around the bigger seahorse, but generally all day. She's pink when she eats, when she swims, and when she's just hanging on to the piece of caulerpa or a mangrove pod. I thought I just had a really horny seahorse, until today. I noticed that she started to develop a pouch below her belly. My little girl is turning into a boy and until the sex change is complete, she will be regarded as a he-she.
I thought I was going to have lesbians in my tank, which is actually what I wanted because male seahorses are a lot harder to care for than female seahorses, which is why I bought a girl and not another male to replace the boy that I recently lost. Males often get air bubbles trapped in their pouch, which basically makes them float around on the surface of the water. They become completely immobile and unable to control any of their regular movements. This problem is easily fixed, but it is often stress-inducing for the seahorse. Removing the air bubbles from the seahorse is often called burping the seahorse. Depending on the way you do it (meaning either just pushing the air up to the top of the pouch and then opening the pouch to let the bubbles out, or pushing the bubbles to the top and then poking a flat-ended paperclip into the seahorse's pouch), it can be risky. If you use the paperclip, there's always the chance that the seahorse will get an accidental vasectomy. For this reason, I didn't want to raise male seahorses anymore, even though that would mean that I wouldn't be able to breed the seahorses anymore.
You learn something new everyday. I knew that smaller seahorses (my little one is 3 or 4 inches tall, but can grow as big as 11 inches) can change their sex, but I didn't actually think that it would happen. I didn't know or think that the seahorse would stay permanently pink during the transformation.
I thought I was going to have lesbians in my tank, which is actually what I wanted because male seahorses are a lot harder to care for than female seahorses, which is why I bought a girl and not another male to replace the boy that I recently lost. Males often get air bubbles trapped in their pouch, which basically makes them float around on the surface of the water. They become completely immobile and unable to control any of their regular movements. This problem is easily fixed, but it is often stress-inducing for the seahorse. Removing the air bubbles from the seahorse is often called burping the seahorse. Depending on the way you do it (meaning either just pushing the air up to the top of the pouch and then opening the pouch to let the bubbles out, or pushing the bubbles to the top and then poking a flat-ended paperclip into the seahorse's pouch), it can be risky. If you use the paperclip, there's always the chance that the seahorse will get an accidental vasectomy. For this reason, I didn't want to raise male seahorses anymore, even though that would mean that I wouldn't be able to breed the seahorses anymore.
You learn something new everyday. I knew that smaller seahorses (my little one is 3 or 4 inches tall, but can grow as big as 11 inches) can change their sex, but I didn't actually think that it would happen. I didn't know or think that the seahorse would stay permanently pink during the transformation.
