January 19, 2010

Louis and Buffy sitting in a tree…

It appears after all the hard work that Lois has done (changing colors, etc.) Louis has successfully courted Buffy… I would have to guess in about 15-20 days we will have a few (50-100) new seahorses.. Lois was a black female seahorse and when Louis an orange male seahorse reached breeding age, Lois (an older female seahorse) changed from black to orange to increase the odds for Louis to court her. However Louis choose a much younger black seahorse Buffy. I think Lois will get to keep the house and car, but they’ll split his 401k….. What a seahorse soap-opera..

This afternoon we noticed that Buffy and Louis where doing the dance. Both Louis and Buffy have recently reached breeding age. They are teenagers in seahorse years.


This was total unexpected and caught us off guard. We did not get very many good pictures. But they we will be back at it about 20 – 30 days, so this time we’ll be ready. Once a pair of seahorse becomes mated they tend to mate once a month as long as the water quality is good and the temperature is right. The male seahorse holds the eggs in a pouch for 15-20 days and this give the female time to produce more eggs during the male’s gestation. In the wild the baby seahorse mortality rate is about 98%. So you can see why they need to reproduce so much.


Buffy and Louis after a nice dinner and movie are relaxing on the half shell.