ORbabies

This page is dedicated to my first brood of seahorse fry that I have ever had the priveledge to care for, and also to their parents, whom I love to watch display and court in their 25 gallon home. First of all, I'd like to thank my two best seahorse friends - Alisa Abott and DeAnne Lachney. These two wonderful women have helped me from the beginning, all the way from helping me decide on my first species of seahorse to when I was blessed with the wonderful fry pictured later on this page. I can't stress enough how much they helped me, their enthusiam and love of the seahorse is to be admired.

Just in case you were wondering, I do like dragons. Every time I look at Rhea, I'm reminded of one of those fantastic creatures. It's probably because Rhea has spines, or short protrusions anyway, at the corners of her "plates"; the ones along her spinal column are larger. You can see them in the pictures!

These are pictures of my set ups, my Ocean Riders, their babies, and my Dwarves
(Hippocampus zosterae). These pictures are in no particular order, but they are roughly
grouped according to what is in the picture. As usual, click on the thumbnail to view the
full sized picture. Follow the links to more pictures of each group!

	This is my main tank, it is where I keep my two Ocean Rider Mustangs, 6 male Sailfin Mollies, a bay scallop, 7 pipefish, and a tiny blenny. It's a happy home, everybody is always getting enough to eat and are exploring constantly. Taken on 7-1-00	This is a picture of my fry tank set-up. 3 inches of aquarium space is divided off to accomodate a very powerful power filter. The one I'm using is meant for 20-40 gallon tanks! Needless to say, the water is always pretty clean. The fry are doing well, so I'll keep using this set up as long as they keep healthy and happy. Taken on 7-31-00
MORE tank pictures and information
	This is my Ocean Rider Mustang Male. He started out as the most active of the pair, but Rhea seemed to take over his role and he started to just hide in the plants and come out to eat. He's very healthy, nothing is wrong with him, he just prefers to hitch onto the protein skimmer and relax all day. Taken on 7-1-00	This is Rhea, my Ocean Rider Mustang Female. She is the most active of all of my seahorses, she's always exploring, hungint for food, pestering the ghost shrimps that are too large for her to eat, and just having a good time ignoring the mollies. She started out very shy, I'm glad she changed her attitude! Taken on 7-5-00
MORE single pictures
	This is another picture of my Ocean Riders. Rhea is the one "choking" Cronus. He's struggling to get out of her grasp. You can also see some of their children (the Olympians, in Greek Mythology!) Taken on 7-18-00	This, however fuzzy it may be, is one of my favorite pictues of my Ocean Rider pair. I captured this beautiful act of courtship while sitting watching them do their usual thing, which is the male displaying and the female ignoring. She finally got interested, thougn, and I am no blessed with fry 3 weeks old on August 3rd. Taken on 7-2-00
MORE courtship pictures
	This is a picture of the newborn Ocean Rider fry. The majority of the fry were born on July 13, but 6 of them were born on the 10 of July. You can see their bellies full of orange baby brine shrimp! Taken 7-17-00	This is the most recent picture of my Ocean Rider fry. They are almost 3 weeks old in this picture, this is also one of my personal favorites of all the pictures I've taken of any of my seahorses. Taken 7-31-00
MORE fry pictures and information
Hopefully I will be scanning some of my artwork and putting them in my aquatics pages.