Breeding & Raising Seahorses for Beginners

Perhaps you’ve already started keeping seahorses and are now eager to take the next step in breeding them and raising the young to adulthood. Maybe you’ve been attempting to breed them without success, or you’ve just noticed a male’s pouch looking swollen, indicating he’s carrying fry. Or perhaps you’ve unexpectedly found tiny baby seahorses swirling around your aquarium.

Whatever your situation, this guide offers the help and advice you need to successfully raise baby seahorses from birth to adulthood. While breeding seahorses, particularly Dwarf Seahorses, isn’t typically challenging—they’re often called the ‘rabbits of the sea’ for their prolific breeding—the real work begins with raising the babies. This can almost feel like a full-time job!

In this book, I’ll walk you through the entire process, from setting up a nursery tank to feeding the fry and eventually transitioning them to more convenient frozen foods like the adults. The methods discussed are proven to work well in a home aquarium setting.

There’s also a dedicated chapter on breeding Dwarf Seahorses. Their requirements are simpler, so this is the shortest chapter in the book. While Dwarf Seahorses were not available in the UK at the time of writing, efforts were being made to import them and restart breeding programs, which is promising news for UK enthusiasts.

For clarity, this book assumes that you are not a complete beginner and have some experience in maintaining a healthy aquarium environment with seahorses or Dwarf Seahorses.