Hippocampus zosterae or dwarf seahorses

[xoticlover]

Im wanting to make a species tank for hippocampus zosterae or the dwarf seahorses. Wondering If anyone knew of a distributor or breeder preferably in or near British Columbia where I could get these. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[rayjay]

The ONLY place I know of at this time that is bringing dwarfs into Canada is at the opposite end of the country to you.
Sea U Marine in Markham Ontario (near Toronto) brings them in with orders of erectus from seahorsecorral.com in Florida.
Speaking from experience, ( I was the first to import from that source) it's a lot of work to keep dwarfs going, and they have a short lifespan compared to standard seahorses.
They need to be fed enriched bbs several times a day, with the old food having to be removed before the new food is added so that they don't eat the food that no longer has nutrition.
Food density has to be exceptional because most dwarfs, most of the time, don't search for their food, but rather stay hitched and wait for the food to pass close enough to them to snick without leaving their hitch.
I have no problem keeping 20 or more in a 5g tank, bare bottom with some live rock as the biological filter and open ended air lines for water movement.
I used a mini filter on a timer to remove food about an hour after feeding, and cleaned the filter daily to reduce bacterial problems.
I used artificial hitching and decor.
After a couple of years of this, I stopped doing it because I no longer wanted that kind of work load for such a small tank.
I still have four tanks of standard seahorses but they aren't as much work per tank as dwarfs IMO.
Check out the dwarf forum on seahorse.org.

[xoticlover]

Thanks for the feedback Ray. Looks like after doing some more research that hippocampus fuscus is really the species that I want. Do you know if these are available?