pony stable

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Seahorses are fascinating, beautiful creatures but should not be attempted until you have a fair amount of experience with easier to keep fish because they require a large portion of TLC to do well. Even captive-bred ones can sometimes stop eating frzn foods & become extremely picky about their diet. Not sure how much sw experience you have, so I just thought I'd put this out.

If you feel up to the challenge, find out what species your LFS can get in & how much it'll cost so you can make an informed decision.

Then, decide how many you can afford/want to keep & that'll help determine tank size.

Then set up the appropriate sized tank with some LR & LS & let it cycle for several months. This will also give your pod/live mysis population time to reproduce so you'll have a good supply of live food before your seahorses arrive. When stressed (such as going from the LFS to your place) SHs often go off-feed & need live food to survive until you can re-educate them to eat frzn mysis.

Plastic plants & fake corals may look funny but actually make pretty good seahorse perches.

A species tank is best but you can also add some small, slow fish (ie. goby or clownfish) after the seahorses are settled in. But most sources highly recommend a seahorse-only tank.

A refugium with lots of plants is also a great thing to have to repopulate the pods & mysis in your main tank. Remember, seahorses can literally eat hundreds of "bugs" per day, so the more pods you have, the better.

SHs also like very stable water conditions & need a mature system.

Overfeeding is almost a given so be prepared to deal with a bristle worm outbreak.

My ideal system would be a 2' cube tank with an above tank refugium (so live pods would flow down into the display tank) & a below tank sump (for extra water volume & a good in-sump skimmer & extra LR). The tank would be planted with seagrass & prolifera for them to hang on to.

HTH,

Anthony