Pouch evacuation

[Sea~Horse~Whisperer]

One of my male seahorses developed an airbubble in his pouch. I read on seahorse.org how to do the pouch evacuation to rid him of the airbubble. It is NOT an easy thing to do the first time. My poor male was floating tail up to the top of the tank. I tried 3 times yesterday to do the procedure, and I failed.

8 am this morning he was really floating, and I had to do something!! I tried one more time and I got it out. He is ok now and swimming around like nothing happened. IF anyone else has this happen to one of their seahorses, feel free to send me a pm and I will tell you how I did it.


Angie

[Fatman]

Im just curious but how does this happen, why? And do you have to like operate on them or something, I cant imagine doing something like that on something so small.

[Sea~Horse~Whisperer]

Once males get to the courting age, they tend to "flush" their pouches with water. This both stretches the pouch so it can receive the eggs from the female, and it attracks the females. The bigger the pouch, the more eggs it can hold.

Tiny micro bubbles get into the pouch and stay trapped inside. Eventually they collect to form a bigger airbubble. Sometimes the males can expell the air by flushing the pouch again, and the air can escape with the water. If for some reason he can not "crunch" it out, it will cause him to float. If not removed by us, he will die.

It is NOT easy to do, (atleast not at first) and I hope nobody ever has to do it. The hardest part is applying enough pressure to get the air out, while teasing the pouch opening open, without hurting him.

Yesterday I tried 3 times and failed. I didn't want to hurt him. Today he was floating so badly, he couldn't even hitch to anything to eat. I mustered up the courage to try again. There really wasn't an option. I had to tell myself, If I do not succeed, he will die. I guess that was the motivation I needed.

Here is an article from the library on seahorse.org on how to do evacs. I got the pouch open another way, but I don't want to list it here.

http://www.seahorse.org/library/arti...ouchevac.shtml

Angie

[BWADWM35]

I read that about them. It didn't sound that hard. But I guess in reality holding something so much smaller than you would make me seriously think about the amount of presure. The part that sounded the hardest was teasing the poch to open.