Novahobbies' 37 gallon seahorse reef thread

Tank looks really awesome!
How come your rocks are blue-ish
In color?

 

I know, I'm an English major. The writing habit is hard to break. I hope the pics helped ease the monotony, tho! Thanks for the kind words; I was bummed about the blueberry but I promised myself I would only risk one specimen. I'm REALLY happy with my photosynthetic gorgs now.

 

Crap, I totally forgot to mention that. OK, the rocks are blue-ish for two reasons: First, my camera has an issue with the blueish-purple tinge between my background and the actinics, so it messes with the color temperature that I don't usually bother to correct in photoshop.

Second, I gave the entire rock stand a light dusting of Krylon Fusion before it went in the tank. Yup. I painted the rock....just a little....because I know what happens to Great stuff foam under the lights after a while - it yellows. The idea was to give the rock some color definition until real coralline took hold (which is slowly happening now in fact). It's not nearly as blue as you see in some of these pictures; a few of them have the contrast up way too much. In fact, the color is a mix of light blue and pale purple and looks very nice to my eyes. My only regret is not using BLACK Great Stuff foam in this project. The paint has worn off in places and the yellow foam just shines right on through.

 

OK, as promised it's time for some seahorse pics.

By the time I got this horse I was officially out of a job and doing whatever odd work I could find. I had no intentions of buying a seahorse at this point. Work was up in the air, I didn't know if we were going to be staying in the current house, the current city, or even in the current STATE for much longer. It was near the end of April 2010 and the tank had a nice collection of easy corals in it..... I was fairly happy with the way it was. Until I saw HER.....


Now, let me discourage all the potential newbie seahorse keepers out there: this kind of seahorse is not for the newb. What you're looking at is a wild-caught southern H. erectus female. There are three general "grades" for seahorses, from hardest to keep to easiest: wild-caught, captive-bred, and tank-raised. Wild caught horses are exactly that: animals caught in the wild, with no idea of how to eat frozen food, and possible pathogen carriers. Worms are common in this category. "Captive bred" horses are often animals that have been bred in large open-water pens, or systems that are attached to the ocean with no other filtration. These horses generally eat frozen, but still have all the pathogen dangers of wild caught animals. Tank-raised horses are the best of the bunch, having been bred from birth in captivity using common aquarium conditions. These kiddies are almost always weaned on to frozen mysis already, and are pathogen-free. Places like ORA, Seahorse Source, etc are great places to order tank raised horses.

Anyway, I digress. This particular horse was wild, so I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me. Since I've already had some experience under my belt with horses, I thought it was worth the risk. And the price.....! $35.00 and I was coming home with a fantastic little female seahorse.

Again, I'm going to skip forward a little here. De-worming a seahorse takes 9 weeks of QT, using 3 different de-worming meds over three week courses each. During this time she stayed in a QT tank, was fed gutloaded live brine with her meds and some coral frenzy/selcon added to the mix to help give her a few more nutrients. She lost almost all of her cirri (all those little appendages) during the quarantine process, but I was sort of expecting that. During the time in QT, I also started the long process of getting her used to frozen mysis. This will take a LONG time. As it is, QT went from 05/09/2010 to 07/15/2010 (IIRC).

Whew.....almost a whole post of plain text! Next up - in the tank.

 

Soon after introduction to the tank. You can see her cirri are gone now. Checking out the fake plant:


Cirri gone, but her saddle markings and color are still great!


She really loves the large xenia colony:


Queen of her domain. She's up at the VEEEERY top, behind the blue aqualifter effluent tube.


Back in her Xenia. Take a look at her horn and crown cirri. See how they're getting longer again?


Cruising around...


A day or two later. I noticed her cirri are starting to divide again. And yes, she REALLY likes that xenia:

 

Taking a quick break of the animal pics to give you the stats and pics of the equipment as it stands right now. Tank is the same of course, 37 gallon that's 20x18x24 inches.

Tom Aquatics PS3 filter;
Filter includes 2 layers of floss, 1 Purigen pillow, one Phosgard pillow, activated carbon, bioballs, and sintered glass rings.
One Koralia-1 powerhead.
Stealth 200w heater (never used!)
Aquaclear 20 HOB filter modded with an Ice Probe.
AquaticLife Mini 115 internal protein skimmer.
Lighting is a PC 130w fixture with 65w 10,000k bulb, 65w Actinic, and moon lights on separate timers.
Top of tank is open with black pond netting double-layered in a custom frame.

Current stats (and no I'm not listing them all!):
Amm: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10
Temp: 70*F

Livestock:
6 Blue-leg hermits
3 Nassarius snails
1 Mexican Turbo snail
4 Turban snails
1 Florida fighting conch
2 or 3 uneaten ghost shrimp
1 "generic" sandsifting goby (closest species would be diamond goby)
1 female H. erectus.

This pic shows the impact of the equipment in the tank itself. I'm fairly happy with this...the "support stuff" isn't overpowering the environment to my eye....


The back of the tank, right side. You can see the top of the protein skimmer here, as well as the fan:


Back of tank, left side. The Filter is still doing great, and you can see the screened in top pretty well from here. I know the fan looks precarious, but it's really very stable there. I modded that from a spare computer fan and an old 12v power supply. The "rails" are wood trim glued in place along the side so I could balance the fan accordingly.


For those who are interested, the chiller alone brought my tank temp to 72*, and the addition of the fan dropped that down to 70* average. Even in the middle of summer with the lights on, it no longer ever goes above 72 max.

 

We're finally getting into last week's pics and such.

Kinda blurry FTS, showing where the gorgs are glued in for good (until I move). Seahorse is up at the very top...again.


Just cruisin'


And again....


Finally - success! It took her 4 months to learn to take frozen food. I finally got her to go after frozen mysis by taking individual mysids and waving them in front of her in a pair of tongs to mimic some life. This process took a few nights before she would come up to the mysid as soon as I put it in the water. It took another 2 weeks before she finally figured out what her food bowl was for.....


And last for now: one of my absolute favorite current pictures of her:


That's it for now! Hope you enjoyed the 10+ months of aquarium journal packed into one day's worth of posts! I'm worn out, think I'm going for a Saturday afternoon nap now. ;D

 

Almost forgot the final stocklist!

I'm moving in the next couple months, and in doing so I have to break down my 110g tank. Most of the stock from this tank is going to be sold off, but I'm keeping my McCosker's flasher wrasse and my male mandarin for the seahorse tank. The flasher wrasse may be an issue down the road, but he's listed as fairly safe on seahorse.org's main list and I just went through so much to get him that I don't want to give him up yet! The male mandarin is unique....he actively chases after and eats frozen PE mysis. My tank's cannister style sump (cannisump?) filter is a great breeding ground for pods, but I'm sure the big guy is going to put a dent in their population. The mysis is just to ensure he doesn't go hungry. After the move, when all the parameters have equalized, I may consider one more male seahorse. My long term goal would be to return both the McCosker's and the Mandarin to a larger tank and use this for 3 seahorses (2females, one male), my sandsifter goby, and 2 firefish.

 

Beautiful!!

 

i wouldnt say the wild caught erectus are very difficult, they can be weaned onto frozen food eventually. i have recently been breeding dwarf horses and they require newly hatched decapsulated brine shrimp.

i do agree that there is always a chance a wild caught specimen can carry some disease. that is a pretty nice looking horse, you should check out seahorse.com, thats where i used to always go when i was into the larger horses.
but their dwarf horses are 70 something dollars each. which is a far cry from the 20 dollars a pair wholesale i usually get.