Who You Callin' Pot Belly?!?

The Pot Belly Seahorse (Hippocampus abdominalis) was so named for the distinctively large belly on the male of the species. This feature has earned them another personal insult of a common name, the Big Belly Seahorse. Hippocampus is word that has a Greek origin and means something like “curved horse.” Abdominalis is yet another obvious reference to their prodigious abs! Pot Bellies are in the family Syngnathidae, which we all commonly refer to as pipefishes and seahorses! While we wouldn't bet on any seahorse in a swimming race, the Pot Belly is one of the most adept swimmers in the family. They are also big for seahorses and when that curly tail is stretched out, can regularly get eight to ten inches long, and though rare, a foot long specimen is the record!

Wild individuals of this species are rarely seen for sale and all of the Pot Belly Seahorses available from Quality Marine are aquacultured, from sustainable captive breeding farms, both domestic and global. Unlike many Seahorses, Hippocampus abdominalis are considered a species of low risk by CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species). Wild Pot Belly Seahorses come from the southwest Pacific Ocean most commonly from Australian waters. They can be found in tidepools all the way down to more than 300 feet deep. They're also regularly found in sargassum, free floating on the current far out at sea. Pot Belly Seahorses can be found swimming in the open water but are usually more closely linked to a place for them to hold on with their prehensile tails. They love to hang onto macro algae, sponges and sea grasses in the shallows and coral or gorgonian sea fans in deeper waters.

As one of the bigger Seahorses, Pot Belly displays should be at least 55 gallons for a trio, and larger as you add more fish. They are somewhat more active than other seahorses and will do more exploring of their habitat than some of their more common cousins. PBS will want room to live and select a perch that they like without feeling crowded so give them plenty of suitable spaces to latch on to some structure for rest periods. Coral Skeletons and Gorgonians (live or skeletons) are both popular for this. Robust macro-algae gardens are great choices. Very slender branching rock and mangrove roots also make good options. Avoid putting your heater in the main display as your Seahorses can get burned by them when they try to grab hold with their tails. They will do best in water that is on the cool side, we suggest somewhere between 70 and 75. The flow of the aquarium should be sedate, both to make their swimming lives easier and to help them catch food.

One of the best reasons to choose aquacultured Seahorses is feeding. They've been eating prepared foods for their whole lives and are already conditioned to see humans as food sources. Smaller specimens will do well on the variety of enhanced Gamma Brine Products, like Brine Plus Omega and Brine Plus Spirulina or Gamma Mysis and Gamma Mosquito Larvae or Tubifex. Larger specimens will happily take Gamma Bloodworms and even Chopped Prawn or Chopped Mussel. You will occasionally see specimens that learn to take pelletized foods, which is a great help in keeping them heavy, as Nutramar Complete is a very protein dense, broad nutrient spectrum food. It's always worth it to slip a few appropriately sized pellets in with their meals to offer them this opportunity. They'll relish live foods like gut loaded brine and tubifex as well. Here we feed them twice a day and vary their food every day. At each feeding, continue to offer them food until they become disinterested.

With enough space, you could keep as many PBS as you wanted in a single display (which will greatly increase your odds of captive reproduction!). We always say that the best way to display any Seahorse or Pipefish is as a species-specific display; they are plenty cool enough on their own, and this makes it easy to get them enough food as even the fastest swimming Seahorses are slow eaters. If you are bound and determined to have some other fish in the tank with them, we'd suggest slow feeding fish that prefer the lower reaches of the tank, like Dragonettes. The worst thing you can do is try to display them with large predators and next on the bad idea list would be adept swimmers that are robust eaters like Tangs or Wrasses!

If you're so inclined, Pot Belly Seahorses are relatively easy to breed in the home aquarium, for a variety of factors. Courtship displays between Pot Belly Seahorses are fascinating and will happen in the days leading up to the spawning event. You'll get to see the two seahorses embrace, moving their heads back and forth, wrapping around one another’s tails, and swimming like this together. Males are easy to identify because of their big, beautiful bellies and pouches where they will hold the eggs after the female releases them. They'll carry these eggs around for a few weeks and likely won't eat much during this period. Don't be alarmed, this is totally normal. When the young hatch, they'll be released by the male in a process that is incredibly dramatic if you're lucky enough to see it happen. That male is going to be hungry after his multiple weeks fasting, and he isn't that smart, so if you want those babies to grow up before being cannibalized by their own father in some greek-mythologyesqe tragedy, you should move them to another tank. Don't expose them air in this process. The fully formed newborn seahorses are a treat to behold and will be large enough to eat copepods and baby brine shrimp and other small foods right after birth.

Aquacultured Pot Belly Seahorses are gorgeous and graceful. They make for a display that everyone is entranced by. They're fully sustainable and come pre-adapted to aquarium life. They're fascinating social creatures that are relatively likely to reproduce for you given a healthy adult, mixed sex pair. Call your local fish store and ask them to order you at least a few Aquacultured Pot Belly Seahorses from Quality Marine today!