Sea Horse

My brother and I where talking the other day and he was shoing some intrest in keeping Seahorses and wanted to know what size tank and tank mates and basicly what is needed to have them thrive?

 

Taller tanks, cooler water, no tank mates.

 

::thumbsup::

What Jason said (plus a hitching post of some sort whether it's thin corals or macroalgaes).

 

Gotcha so a like a 30 gallon tall tanks or what? Bigger = better??

 

30 hex would be about perfect. And like inwall said, they need "hitches" (things they can wrap their tail around), whether it be macro algaes, certain corals, even fake decorations, etc. I should also add that they prefer much lower flow rates than a typical reef tank, as they are week swimmers and very slow feeders.
The specifics on everything really come down to what species of sea horse. Some require a lot of vertical swimming room, some require very little and more horizontal. Some species of sea horse can even be damaged or sickened by too bright of lighting. It really depends on species. Most sea horses you will see at an LFS will be the kelloggi species, which grows fairly large and requires a lot of vertical room. But there are shallow water species like H. fuga stay small, can handle a little more lighting, and temps up to 78, and can do well in something like a 20L as they prefer to swim horizontally (this is the species I may try in my fuge on my system).
They definitely require a lot of research, and are not for a beginning aquarist.

 

Ok cool thank you guys for your input! I wil recomend to him to do some research and ASK QUESTIONS! ANy other lil tidbits woould be greatly apriciated !

 

The only other tank mates I've heard will wok are some pipe fish, sea moths, and CuC inverts. I'd like to have a seahorse tank, but need a good chiller first.

LFS here has 4-5 Readi's in stock from ORA. Very nice looking.

 

Nice! So you guys would recoment a chiller then?

 

It depends on the species as was stated. http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/careguide/careguide.pdf

 

Feeding is also a huge commitment. Some will not eat frozen food so you'll have to feed live. Regardless of what they will or will not eat, these animals need to be fed every day, sometimes several times a day, so if you're not ready for that kind of commitment, you're not ready to keep this fish. You'll have to make arrangements for somebody to feed them if you go out of town, even if it's only for one day.