Gonna start a seahorse tank! Holy babies everywhere!

Been reading, researching and talking myself out of it, while my boy talks me into one, and I think he's won the battle. Gonna do dwarf seahorse as I don't want to start a 30+gallon tank. Gonna go smaller. Debating between these 2;

Amazon.com: Marineland Eclipse Seamless Integrated Aquarium System, 5 Gallons, Hex: Pet Supplies
Not a huge fan of hex tanks, but its small so maybe ok

But leaning towards this 10g which I could put my hob fuge on and grow pods for them, but then I'd need to build an overflow to hide all the equipment and control the flow.
Aquarium Kits: Marineland BIO-Wheel LED Aquarium Kit
comes with heater, filter and thermometer, all cheap I know, but I don't even think I'll need a heater except in an emergency situation

Thoughts?

Gonna do black sand with white dry rock and fake plants for it.

 

Following!! ~~~~~

 

Sounds like a plan. I would look for a breeder who has them eating frozen. Other then that it sounds good.

 

Agreed. Following. I have thought about doing this for a long time!

 

that is going to be so cool! Cant wait to see pictures of the tank! Love dwarf seahorses!!!!

 

Damn that was quick! lol

I'm trying, I'll have at least 4 weeks for the cycle to find some. So far all I can find eating frozen is the bigger ones, which won't work in this tank. Almost talked myself into a bigge tank for the bigger ones and pipe fish, but I have a 220ish build working in my head that I need to budget for.

Yeah, they seem pretty cool to watch, I'm just hoping its not as hard as it seems like it may be I think if I get the brine shrimp hatchery working well it won't be a big deal. I'm thinking once the fuge gets going it should help with that. The main problem I'm having is avoiding pests. Evidently hydroids and aiptaisia will kill these lil buggers Gonna go all dry rock and fake plants and hope none make it in on any of the snails.

 

Add some peppermint shrimp?

 

not sure about them, I've read mixed reviews about them in there, dwarf seahorses are pretty prone to getting eaten by critters. I may, haven't decided yet.

Thoughts?

 

You don't really want more than about 5g as it gets to tedious to remove the uneaten bbs before the next feeding unless you are shutting down the filter for a few hours for feeding and then letting it come back on to remove the uneaten brine shrimp. A ten gallon tank would require an enormous amount of brine shrimp to have sufficient density for proper feeding.
I use plain tanks with air lines for water movement, a bit of rock for biological filtration, and the only filtration is Marina i25 in tank filter on a timer that I set to come on after a few hours of feeding and set to run for about 3 hours to remove the uneaten bbs.
Dwarfs aren't known for search/chasing down food but rather sit hitched and wait for it to come by so they can snick it up without moving off their hitch.
For this reason, you need a fairly high density of bbs in the tank.
A five gallon tank can probably handle up to 50 dwarfs if it just builds up gradually from newborns increasing the numbers.
The bbs should be grown out for a day after hatching until their digestive tract is complete and then should be enriched in two 12 hour stages with new water and enrichment for each of the two stages.
For ingtar, there are NO breeders training them to eat frozen. It is a futile act to try. While occasionally you can get some to eat short term, in the end they will starve without live food.
Start the tank off sterile and cycle using ammonium chloride or liquid ammonia that doesn't have any additives or perfumes. This combined with sterilizing or decapping the brine cysts should eliminate the chances of having hydroids.
You should have no need of a heater as the recommended temperature is the same as for standard seahorses, 68° to 72°F.
Many of those PNP systems have heat problems so you have to investigate the particular system you finally decide on. Also, covered aquariums can lead to less gas exchange at the surface, lowering the pH.
For dwarfs, leave out the peppermint shrimp as it will eat the fry even if it doesn't bother the adults.
Also, for dwarfs it would be better to grow the pods in a separate system and harvest for adding to the dwarf tank.
The pods will have to be pelagic and not benthic as they seldom hunt down benthic ones.
The simplest and cheapest hatches are made from pop bottles.
DIY Hatcher/Enricher
As for your comment about another tank, bigger seahorses and pipe fish, it's not worth risking as MOST times, but not always, you loose either one species or both due to pathogen exposure that they haven't grown up with.
Even mixing species of seahorses or even mixing same species from different breeders is very problematic.

 

DAMN! Good post brother, wasn't sure we had a a dwarf seahorse pro on here.
Sounds like we do, I agree with everyhting you said, except 50 in a 5g??? Not that I disagree with this, just WOW. Ok, back to the 5G
I think I'll do this then, not a fan of hex's but I like the tall dimensions better



And yeah, I'm gonna build my own brine hatchery and set up a grow out tank for it. I'm gonna stick with the black sand as I just want it. Sorry, I like BB, but want a black sand tank Good to know about the not eating frozen thing, I looked but couldn't find, now I know why! I found a place online that sells them for around $5 a pop and with shipping about $50 for 6 of them. I'll prob get them from saltcritters.com as I've used them in the past and like their service, but they are a bit pricier. Guess I'll just have to order afew corals to get to the free shipping deal

Thanks for the help, and rip my plan apart more!!