Seahorses!

Hi Friends,

I have always wanted seahorses and am considering getting them in the future. The question that I have is has anyone tried to duplicate the conditions of the ocean.

An example: plenty of food and a slow current.

kitty2234

 

Well, over the years, just about everything has been tried. However, different seahorses come from different parts of the ocean originally, so what part do you want to recreate?
Unfortunately, our tanks are limited in volume and CANNOT duplicate the water continually changing as it goes by the habitat.
Current flow in the ocean also varies GREATLY, but seahorses don't have to have just low flow as we might conceive it being, but can have areas of low, medium and high flow as long as there is hitching available so they can choose which area to be in at any given time.
Too low a flow and you create other problems for the seahorses by ending up with tank water that is made for great nasty bacterial growth.
As for "plenty of food", you will have to add the food because in the limited confines of the tank, you will NOT have enough growth of the "food" to sustain the seahorses for long as they will quickly decimate the populations.
They will do just fine with two to three feedings of frozen mysis per day, and you can augment their nutrition by feeding live enriched brine shrimp/mysids with using Dan's Feed from seahorsesource.com, once or twice a week.
If you go to my signature and check out the links at the BOTTOM of the "My Thoughts on Seahorse Keeping" it will provide a good starting base for seahorse keeping. You may have to register at seahorse.org to view some of the links.

 

Many would like to keep seahorses.You should research as much as you can beforehand as they require a special dedicated system and a lot of effort and commitment by the keeper to do well.

 

Hi Fish Friends,

Thanks for the feedback. One of my ideas was to try to maintain a colony of brine shrimp in the tank. I felt this would keep the seahorses, well fed.

kitty2234

 

Sorry, you can add enriched adult brine to the tank and they will be gone in VERY short order. In addition, any brine that happened to be there very long would have lost the important enrichment of fatty acids and be only a source basically of protein.
Brine shrimp CANNOT survive anywhere there is predation.
They exist in places like the Great Salt Lake because there is no predation there.
Also, the food supply would be insufficient anyway to feed the brine shrimp.
While some add mysid shrimp and various pod forms, they too get quickly decimated to the point there is little happening in sustaining the cultures at any meaningful densities.

 

Rayjay has a good handle on SH-keeping, and is giving you the real "dope" on them.

Don't go into SH planning to let the tank fend for itself...it won't work unless you can provide a virtually endless supply of larger pods (not copepods) and/or mysids.

They really do need to be fed every day...in fact, we've seen some SH where their GI tracts have shut down irreversibly after as few as four days without food. SH lack a true stomach, and as such, cannot hold food for digestion.

As for current, SH swim much better than previously thought, and actually often seek out areas of high flow, but should have "rest areas" with reduced flow as well. Alternating flow is better than laminar flow, BTW.

HTH