Comments on: What’s Love Got to Do With It? The Truth About Seahorse Monogamy

By: Quora

Quora — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:20:38 +0000

What are some interesting facts about seahorses?…

The most interesting thing about seahorses is that a scientific paper on one seahorse species, has caused the emergence of an urban legend about their supposed monogamy and mating-for-life habits. That in turn has spurred a lot of research on many othe…

By: Felicia

Felicia — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:30:45 +0000

Judy, it’s most likely that your seahorses died from seahorse-specific infection such as ciliates that infest the hyoid bone (trigger), snout, and gills. Internal parasites or internal bacterial infection could have also been likely culprits. Even if you had them for a long time, they could have been asymptomatic carriers, and the infection could have been brought on by some stressor, or it could have been introduced with new snails or plants, etc. Since these infections are seahorse-specific, your other fish would not have suffered. It is not in our seahorses’ best interest to anthropomorphise them.

By: Judy

Judy — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:53:20 +0000

I also had a pair, for quite some time….they had 3 sets of babies. Then suddenly, the female stopped eating, no matter what I tried to feed her. The male was fine. About a week after she died, the male stopped eating, and within a week he was dead as well. Nothing else in my well established tank suffered, and that was over 3 years ago….I’ve had the same pair of nemos (false percula) in the tank since it’s inception, going on 6 years now…

By: Felicia

Felicia — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:25:08 +0000

Becky,

Your seahorse didn’t die of a broken heart. The cause of death was likely the same for both seahorses. It could have been a disease, parasitic infection, or poor water quality that killed them. Misconceptions like these give people a false sense of blamelessness and discourage seahorse keepers from trying to find out the real reason their seahorse died.

By: Becky

Becky — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:01:08 +0000

I had two seahorses and the boy got sick and died. And when he died his mate stopped eating, and died two weeks later of a broken heart.