Sea Horse Compatability

[tholleyh46]

Okay,

So now I have this 40G Sea Clear tank, currently houses 2 firefish and I left a couple hermits/snails, mushrooms, and polyps in it. It's got that self-enclosed filter area and it is just full of live rock rubble, some chaeto, and two mangoves just as an experiment.

Was thinking of possibly giving two very small seahorses a try in here. Never kept them before, are there any smaller ones that could do well in a 40G and will the firefish gobies be too aggressive for them? I put a very minimal amt of LR in the tank; here's a shot.

How hard are these guys to keep happy?

[tholleyh46]

Water parameters:

Amm - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 5
Alk - 300
Ph - 8.2
Temp currently - 78 d

[Ninong]

Yes, you can keep seahorses with some of the less aggressive fishes but you have to remember that the conditions that are ideal for seahorses are not the same conditions that are ideal for most corals, especially SPS. For starters, they need gentle water flow, not the strong water flow required by most SPS.

You need to make sure you have 'hitching posts' available for them to wrap their tails around. This can be gorgonians, sea grasses, etc. And you have to make sure you're prepared to meet their dietary needs, including frequent feedings.

Seahorses are usually kept in a dedicated tank, not a reef tank.

[tholleyh46]

Ninong, thanks. I really guess I should have posted this in another forum. Not really a 'reef' but I was going to keep the mushrooms and polyps in there - no SPS though. I currently have a maxijet 1200 pwr head in there, but I could certainly remove it. Without it, this tank has real gentle flow which is why I'm considering it. Currently, not running a skimmer in this one, but I have about 3 of them I could put in use if needed.

[Ninong]

You're in the right forum if you intend keeping any corals at all in the tank.

Your setup should work for seahorses provided you give them something to hold onto.

[tholleyh46]

I went and picked up a pair, while the boss is still outta town. Time to slow down on new things, and just enjoy for awhile.

I actually found a lot of info at seahorse.com and .org. If they don't do well, I'll bring them back to the LFS, little leary, my first pair. I just got them aclimated.

For now, they're hanging out on caulerpa, I'll have to look into where I can order seagrass from.

[ibefishy]

Those are pretty cool. My wife loves seahorses and would like to have a tank for them. I am going to watch this thread because I may do something like this in the near future with my 15 gal tank. Keep posting so we can see how it goes.

[Lucid]

Pretty cool setup with the sea horses. Could one turn a tank like that into a refugium?

[tholleyh46]

That's kind of an embedded part of the experiment, we'll see how it goes. These two had been at the LFS for about 3 months so I'm sure they're nice and healthy and they're captive bred; used to frozen foods so I'm going to give them a try. Possibly might convert to a fuge at some point as well; but it's a little large to put near my DT without some shifting around of the furniture.

[Ninong]

You could always tell your wife that they were hiding in a cave in the live rock all this time and they finally came out while she was gone. Tell her how surprised you were.

Caulerpa will work. You don't have to have seagrass. Some people with dedicated seahorse tanks like to have it set up as a seagrass tank. The most common seagrass is Thalassia testudinum, turtle-grass. It's very common in South Florida.

Good luck!

[tholleyh46]

These guys are neat, very docile little critters. They eat very slowly though; I think I might need to fire up a skimmer - afraid of overfeeding them. I want to make sure they can find the food, so I've been feeding them myisis shrimp (frozen) and I just bought some of the arcti pods from reef nutrition - those seem kinda neat. The fish go wild for it, I try to feed it to the corals in the reef but the fish do a good job of only leaving scraps.

None of the LFS' here sell live brine shrimp so I'm hatching my own; going to try those out in this 40G in various stages and see if they can make it with the slower flow and at different stages of maturity. I'm sure they'll just get trapped somewhere but we'll see. I have to remember how to extract the shrimp without the shells and other garbage; I got spoiled in San Diego by just picking up a bag of them every so often already grown. Its been a while since I've hatched them, but I recall the mess from hatching them being quite a mess.

[tholleyh46]

I guess I forgot to mention I want to try the brine shrimp in the tank before installing the skimmer; I'm sure that'll get them.

[tholleyh46]

Well,

These little guys appear to be doing well. This probably qualifies as harassment because they certainly aren't the quickest little critters in the world - but I snapped a few shots of them today.