Starting a Seahorse Tank

I have ordered a 5 gallon eco pico reef tank with 3 led stunner strips planning on doing a little reef but my mind has changed and I am very intersted in keeping seahorses. For equipment I have a 50watt jager heater, internal sponge filter that came with ecopico, dont have sand yet, like 4 pounds of dry rock from BRS. I will be cycling my tank by putting some mysis in it to get it started, then waiting it out. I currently have a 20 gallon reef up and running but there are cyano problems and I am afraid there are things in that tank that could harm delicate seahorses. Is it best to start from scratch? What are these hydroids I hear everybody talking about? I will have some dry rock in the tank along with either a plastic plant or some macro algae. I need a neat looking tank with color and mostly everything natural. Not chaeto bunched up in a pile with seahorses clinging to it. I will order 4 dwarf seahorses off of seahorsesource.com to start it out. For food I will try to setup a little brine shrimp hatchery out of a jar or coke bottle. I will set it up and let it run for maybe a week, putting new eggs in each week. Let me know what you thinkl!

 

I'm interested to here what some experienced people have to say about this because I've always loved seahorses.

 

OMG this sounds like it will be adorable! Sounds like you really know what you're doing. I'd say go for it and start from scratch. What a great project! Can't wait to see pics.
My daughter LOVES seahorses. I may consider doing this someday.

 

I started one a few months ago and yeah, start from scratch, all dry rock, all dry sand, hydroids, majanos, aip, some pods, brittle stars, worms etc will kill them

look at my thread for a way to do your hatchery and i highly advise using decapsulated brine shrimp, hatch easier, no shells and are more nutritious. seahorsesource is great but $$$$$$ check out ccritters.com, he'll sell ya 10 for the price of 2 at seahorsesource

http://www.3reef.com/forums/tropica...horse-tank-holy-babies-everywhere-139870.html

Edit, use a 1 liter bottle, less water you'll use up that way, and you'll need to do WCs every few days, I just use a little pitcher and swap about 1/2G out every other day. 5G of water lasts me about a week and a half

 

This sounds awesome, I have a little 5 gallon laying around. I hope you get some good info I can snag lol

 

Dwarf Seahorses - Seahorses

 

50 in 5 gallons sounds insane!

 

It did to me too, but they are small! Too few is actually worse because you'll have to put so much food in a lot will go uneaten and fowl the tank! I started with 18 in my 3G and it wasn't enough! I'd do 30 to start in a 5g

 

We did african dwarf frogs in this tank before, poor guys got red leg. Did teach the girlfriend to listen to me though lol. She really wants seahorses and I have 0 desire to put them in the 30g corner tank im refurbing so im thinking this thing will be awesome.

 

Dang 30g dwarf seahorse tank! Ouch you'd have to put 200 horses in that!