seahorse tank ready?

You asked...

Minimum recommended tank size for 2 seahorses is 20g tall or at the least a 15 gallon tall. They very much
need vertical swimming room (16" - 24" + in height). A ten gallon is way to small for one horse let alone 2!
As far as I am concerned if you really want to keep them I would buy the 20 tall before I bought the horses.

I would not worry about putting anymore live rock in that tank, if you insist on putting them in that tank the
remove most of it, leave some of the Branch in there to give them swimming room. Add one or two plastic plant
for them to hitch on also, mine all tend to avoid the rock or only hang on the rock for a few seconds at most.
The mostly hang on the long grassy plastic plants I supply them.

What kind of lights do you have on that tank? and what is the tempeture in there? anything above 76 degrees
too warm even for tropical SH. This is a very important factor, as SH tend to be prone to bacterial infections,
especially at warmer temps due to an increase in bacterial count. you may hear "SH are found in 80*F water
in the wild", but you must remember that the bacterial concentration in a closed system is infinitely greater
than that of the ocean. I was fighting to keep my temperature down below 76, so i changed from the t5's to
a compact florecent and added a couple of fans which has helped bring it down a bit.


The HOB filter is a very good choice for seahorses Helps pull the excess food out of the tank but I would
recommend that you buy a few extra filter pads, I pull mine out every 3 or 4 days and put clean ones in and
rinse out the dirty one and let them air dry for a week or so then reuse them.

I have both wild caught and tank raised, Adult and Fry and I have never seen any of them chase or eat a pod.
So I really wouldn't worry to much about them. Now my pipe fish, well thats different. I have one thats about
3 inches long in my baby seahorse tank that has completely decimated the pod population in the tank, and
I have added them twice since I put him in there.

I would really recommend that you look at the information available on Seahorse.org before you buy
them because there is wealth of information on there.


You could also look at these two post on 3reef, one has some pictures of my seahorse setup and the other
has some more iformation about the seahorses period.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/tropical-fish/seahorses-51091.html

http://www.3reef.com/forums/general-reef-topics/sea-horses-49287.html

 

Thanks gazog. I'm glad to hear from someone who has horses. As to the tank size I've decided to order the 20XH anyways.

The tank temp stays at 76. I've just got a standard fluorescent light on there since it's not a reef tank.

I suppose I could take the big acro skeleton out to give them more room. And as I already stated I'm getting lots of plants for them when I buy them.

I've torn seahorse.org up looking at their info. Glad for all the help.

 

Well thats cool, I am glad to hear that so that means that this tank is just a temporary home right?

Lighting is good. I actually have some shooms and Zoa's doing quite well on 2 18" standard fluorescent
aquarium bulbs on my fry tank. When you set up the 20 keep in mind that there are lots of corals
that you can keep with a minimal amount of light. Its actually kind of cool to see them hitch on my
Kenya tree in the 56.

I am actually have 4 more horses coming this weekend. They are wild caught specimens that have
been eating frozen for several weeks now, hoping that one of the females will interest my male enough
for them to breed since he obviously isn't interested in the one I already have.

 

Yup the 10 is temporary. Anyone foresee a problem moving a 1" sand bed? It's not a deep one obviously.

I'm planning on getting two females. I don't really want babies every 30 days if I have doubts as to my abilities to hatch their food for them.

 

I started in a 29 and moved them to the 56 that I have now. I moved everything, sand, rocks coral and water. let it settle a day or two which meant I needed a tank to put them in for a short while (used a 15 tall) and then put them in 3 or 4 days later. I don't see any problem.