Fecundity, survival, and growth of the seahorse Hippocampus ingens (Pisces: Syngnathidae) under semi-controlled conditions

Abstract

We studied fecundity, survival, and growth of the seahorse Hippocampus ingens under semi-controlled conditions. Three wild brood stock mature males of 14.8, 24.5, and 32.0 g released 1 598, 1 703, and 1 658 juveniles. Juvenile stocking densities of 12 were settled in 60-l aquariums in groups of 1, 12, and 20 days old organisms. The rate of survival was 21.5, 61.9, and 59.0 %, respectively, in 35 days. Juveniles were fed a mix diet of rotifers B. plicatilis and Artemia nauplii, then they were transferred to a cement tank of 100 000 l at a density of 50/1 000 l and fed with live adult Artemia for 60 days more. They grew from an average of 0.7, 1.5, and 2.7 to 4.5, 5.4, and 6.7 cm, respectively, in 95 days. The seawater temperature varied from 17 to 23 o C.

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“…Sexual differences in seahorses are observed at 95 days of age at a length range between 6 and 7 cm (Ortega-Salas et al, 2006), which demonstrates that all H. guttulatus individuals used in this experiment were mature adults, as male and females were easily identified. The three batches of seahorses were sexed, weighed and measured alive at the beginning of the experiment, then, after five days of separate feeding five individuals were removed from each tank, euthanized using MS 222, then measured and weighed.…”

Avances en el cultivo de Hippocampus spp. (Teleostei: Syngnathidae): investigaciones en el siglo XXI

“…Los caballitos de mar americanos, H. erectus y H. zosterae, presentan tallas al nacer cercanas o superiores a los 10 mm de altura total (Martínez et al, 2005;Lin et al, 2008b;Vite-García et al, 2014a), por ello tienen un tamaño de boca adecuado para consumir presas más grandes que los rotíferos, como nauplios y metanauplios de Artemia (±500 µ). Por otro lado H. reidi y H. ingens presentan una altura menor al nacer, entre 5 y 7 mm (Lourie et al, 2004;Ortega-Salas & Reyes-Bustamante, 2006;Pham & Lin, 2013) e incluso se considera que H. reidi no se encuentra completamente desarrollado como un juvenil hasta el día 18-20 después de su nacimiento (Novelli et al, 2015). Esto restringe el tamaño de la presa en sus primeros días, siendo en este caso adecuado alimentarlos con rotíferos.…”