PharmrJohn's 10g Thread (Seahorse Edition)

here from my collection

 

whats the minimum gallon sea horse can survive in? Do they need extreamly ridiculosly good lighting? Im kinda interested in one, if its cheap of course haha. My biocube is already draining my wallet

 

Depends on the type of Seahorse. A 29g is good for a regular garden variety seahorse. And lighting, to the best of my knowledge (I am still learning) is not a concern. I plan on getting another little 2x18W Nova Extreme so I can have a few mellow corals in there with them. You do need great water quality, so a skimmer is necessary. Also, flow needs to be minimal. Very minimal. The typical 50x in a community tank is stripped down to 5 to 10x tops. I am not going to run more than an airstone and flow from the skimmer. That's it.

And nothing is cheap in this hobby kiddo. The larger the tank, the more expensive the equipement and upkeep.

Jake: Excellent barf "smiley" K+

 

seahorses do not require good lighting. The tank size will also vary depending on the type of seahorse...dwarfs actually do rather well in very small tanks...and they like many with them (can have dozen or so in a 10g) The larger ones (H redi and such) require bigger tanks.

The biggest problem with seahorses are....(Pharm I know you know....just commenting for other considering) is that seahorses require pristine water conditions and they are horrible eaters!They require low flow as they are bad swimmers and will get sucked into filtratration if not.

Also, eating wise they are MESSY eaters. They will look at the food float by, consider eating it, sit there for a while longer, get up and go next to it, stare at it some more, then take a bit and spit half out. This goes on for the entire feeding. They requrie frequent feedings, thus causing water quality to be difficult to maintain. Also, for some reason they can often times stop eating all together. They might be eating frozen food for a long time and then all the sudden stop! You have to have the ability to get live food for them in case that happens (I keep brine shrimp eggs)

I would recommend adding some hitching posts to the tank I have some fake acros in there for mine to hook on to.

Also the best seahorses to buy are tank raised. These guys are hardier and usually eat prepared food much better. Some wild caught ones never eat frozen.

I have 2 H. Redi babies right now in a 14g tank (I had 3 but one got sucked up into the skimmer before I modded it) I had the store hold them for a week before I bought them to make sure they were eating. They are tank raised., They have ate everything from the day I bought them. They eat RODS, mysis, brine, artic pods, etc. I have an under the counter light on top of their tank (as I dont have any corals in there right now) I am going to eventually start doing non-photosynthetic corals when they get a little bigger.

Cant wait to see your horses John. There is a good website seahorses.org that provides a lot of info on care of these guys.

 

Thanks schackmel. Much appreciated. I will check out the webside and make the necessary mods early. I have been poking around syngnathid.org a bit. They do seahorses, pipefish and sea-dragons.

 

Some good tips here so far, but some misinformation too.
The tanks do not need to be low flow in all area's for normal seahorses. (have no dwarf experience so can't answer for that) However, higher flow tanks work quite well as long as their are suitable hitches in low flow area's for them when they so choose. (a common sense high flow that is, not sps type)
Some seahorses will eat almost anything you put in, while others will eat maybe 3 or 4% of the mysis/brine that you put in the tank. They are so fussy only what looks like perfect specimens to them get eaten. Some you need the luck of something moving the frozen mysis just at the right time so it appears to be alive while the horse is hunting that piece down.
A daily, if not more often, vacuuming of the bottom to remove uneaten particles will much improve the tank conditions, especially for picky eaters.
A skimmer is not required, but recommended, as it certainly makes the tank more forgiving, just like a reef tank.
While occasionally a hobbyist is able to keep horses in a reef tank setting with other chosen fish, it is rare when considering all the attempts that have been made.
Same goes for keeping pipefish in with seahorses. While it can succeed, it usually ends in failure.
Recommendation from the most experienced hobbyists on the "ORG" would be to keep single species from the same source in a given set up.
Seahorses naturally carry bacteria or pathogens on them that they have become accustom to, but when mixed with seahorses or pipefish from another source, either one group or the other usually succumbs to the pathogens of the other.
That leads to another piece of information I didn't see here yet and that is regarding temperature of the seahorse tank.
While seahorses can be found in areas of far ranging temperatures, in a tank, it is not normally successful keeping them in "normal" temps they experience.
They themselves obviously can handle the temps in the wild, but in the tank, the captive concentrations of bacteria like vibrio are always present and they multiply rapidly; the higher the temp the more rapid the spread.
Over the years, the experienced hobbyists have found best success with temperatures of 74° F down to 68° with 68° especially being used for treatment of seahorses that come down with problems.
At one time, there were only wild caught horses available.
Today, we have WC, plus net pen raised, which usually means they take pregnant males from the wild and capture the newborn and raise them in net pens in the ocean so they are subject to having the same problems that wild caught have, with the only difference being that they have been trained to eat frozen mysis.
These NP horses have fraudulently be misrepresented to be true captive bred/tank raised horses, when only a minimal time of their lifespan has been in a tank.
What I consider to be true captive bred/tank raised, is a horse that has been raised from a male that is at least a generation away from wild caught, and having it's whole life spent in tanks. (at least 2nd generation life in tanks)
Sometimes the cost of the seahorse can tip off the buyer as to legitimacy with wild caught being cheapest, net pen being more expensive, but true captive bred/tank raised are very expensive because of the cost of raising them.
When I started in this hobby of seahorses, I thought I could do a lot of things others couldn't because of my reefing experience (over a decade at the time) and I ignored a lot of information that I had already found on the "ORG", only to time after time, loose horses/pipefish that I had purchased. They were not immediate losses most times, but they came sooner than they should have.
I now have realized that I'm no different than anyone else, the odds still apply to me, and that if I'm to be reasonably successful, I will have to play those odds.
While I hate to send anyone off site for information, I do so, thinking of possible seahorse/pipefish losses that may be prevented by so doing.
Before getting far into setting up a seahorse tank, visit and learn from the library, articles, and forum, of seahorse.org.

 

Rad pharmr! Is that tank in a fireplace or something?

 

Thank you, Jake. His royal hiney-ness needs to be put in his place sometimes! :crowngrin

 

yeah,,,I keep my seahorses at 73

 

i just recently lost my male sea horse. i had 2 and if there is any advice i can give you its just keep an eye on the water conditions and make sure everything is perfect, also when you feed them turn the filter off until theyre done eating then turn it back on (unless you already new that)