seahorse?

i would love to start a seahorse tank. Do you think after the tank has cycled and stable do you think a JbJ nano cube 6 or 12 would be ok to keep 2 maybe 3 seahorses in? no other fish jus some CUC.

 

the 12 gallon would work for a dwarf seahorse. They prefer to be kept in groups of 4 or more. syngnathid.org - Keeping Dwarf Seahorses (Hippocampus zosterae)

 

I would go no smaller then a 12 g and then it would depend on the seahorses you plan to keep. Some of the larger ones will need more room, while smaller one will do fine. In fact if you want to keep dwarfs you can place many more in there.

However make sure you do your research on the type of seahorses you want to keep. Dwarfs will NEVER eat prepared food...only live.

Try to get captive bred horses if at all possible as those will fare better and will most likely eat prepared food. Trust me it is very complicated to get horses to eat, and even if they do eat prepared food, they can all the sudden decide to not eat anything but live for a bit. You will also have to do very frequent water changes regardless of the type due to the messiness of them.

good luck

 

IMO and many others a 12 gallon is way to small for even a single let alone a pair and to make it worse a Nano is not a good tank to keep them in. A really good choice is a 15 gallon tall, which would be good for one pair, I kow its not much bigger than a 12 gallon nano but its tall. For more than one pair you should use a 29 gallon at the smallest.

Main reasons are first of all tank height, most seahorses including the Smaller species need lots of vertical height in a tank. They tend to not do well in a short tank, if you really sit and watch them you will see that they are a vertically swimming creature, they spend more time going up and down than they do going forward.

Second is temperature, Nanos are notoriously hard to keep cool and sea horses need to be kept cool, my tanks both run between a low of 70 and a high of 75. this isn't because seahorses require cold water it is because most of the parasites and bacteria that cause seahorse problems cannot survive in water that is at this temperature.

And as stated Dwarfs are not a good choice unless your willing to put allot of time into them. They only eat Live Baby brine and these brine must be feed within 4 hours of hatching or they will not be viable as a food because they have absolutely no nutritional value after 4 hours unless you gut load them with something like selcon or another food that escapes my memory right now.

As far as Water changes go yes you will have to do them consistently, I do one every 2 weeks on both my tanks but I also run large amounts of Carbon, phosguard and Chemi-Pure which I change every other week. But seahorses are more forgiving than most people think.

I would recommend that anyone that would like to have seahorses to checkout WWW.SEAHORSE.ORG there is a ton of information on that site. Some of the members will seem a bit standoffish but there are allot that are willing to help.

Sorry to preach but I feel that they are fascinating animals and I hate when I hear of someone keeping them in less than perfect environment, Good luck!

 

I'll second that, and agree, the site linked is invaluable for information on seahorse keeping. I spent a lot of time reading and researching on that site before I ever bought my first seahorse.
Members there really want to help you succeed.