Looking for input on starting a seahorse tank.

[BlueTang<3]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Pipefish and seahorses can be kept together. Other suitable tankmates are very small gobies and blenny's.

Pipe fish and seahorses cant be kept together, they carry diseases that the other cannot handle. I was looking into this originally but the more we read into it found out it is not a good idea.

[BlueTang<3]

Originally Posted by tim the toolman

As the title suggests I am looking to start a seahorse tank build in an old floor model television which I had a freshwater aquarium built into previously. I guess the main questions would be
1. Tank size requirements
2. Need for a protein skimmer?
3. Suitable tank mates
4. Is a refugium necessary (i have read they need a pod colony)
Any other comments would be appreciated, as well as info on your own successes.
And yes I will show a build thread as the T.V. Tank comes to life

Min 30 gallons for a pair
No but it allows you to easily feed more and not worry about it as much, ponies are painfully slow eaters
I have mine with Mandarins, most small well mannered fish would work, but I advise putting much of anything in as they will compete for food.
I stuff my tank with calupera macro algae and it keeps enough food for 2 Mandarins and 2 seahorses and supplement with vitamin enrinched brine.
Keep it low flow and the tank needs to be cool water anything over 72-74 and you wont have any bacteria issues. Cant keep them with corals that will sting them as they have very sensitive skin. I keep them in a 50 gallon cube with a Deltec mce600 skimmer and aqua clear 70, with that low flow they still get blown around.

[tim the toolman]

Thnx for the advice I was looking at the tank being around 30g so that's great news. Do they actually eat the caularpa or it it just for them to hang onto and for pods to thrive in?

[BlueTang<3]

Hiding place for them and the pods, gives them area to hang out. If you want to see our set up its very simple but has been working for the last year, you free to come out.

[tim the toolman]

I may definitely take you up on that offer. I really want to do this right, as idont think I would be able to watch a seahorse perish. I already have a very well established pod colony in my big tank and I also have a lot of caularpa in my sump so I would definatly considering going your route.

[freezetyle]

What ever you do make sure you see your seahorse eat frozen food before you purchase it. I don't care how cute it is, resist the urge.

Try to have a rock with a bowl shape or a plating monti cap skeleton in there. That way you can train them to go there for food. anything that does notg et eaten you can suck up with a turkey baster to help maintain water quality.

Like other have said cooler tank, I would suggest a good quality skimmer, and no other tank makes aside from the clean up crew. On the clean up crew topic. Make sure you do not have any nasty crabs in your rock. I once had one and he was able to grab the tail of my ponies and slowly much on them. so when choosing CUC keep that in mind, most large crabs (including hermits) have the potential to do that.

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by BlueTang<3

Pipe fish and seahorses cant be kept together, they carry diseases that the other cannot handle. I was looking into this originally but the more we read into it found out it is not a good idea.

Hummmm interesting. I know a few people who have kept seahorses and pipes together for years without issues, so I figured it would be fine. I've done a bit of reading about it to, but that was awhile ago, and other then remembering people saying it could be done I can't remember if they also said it shouldn't.

[rayjay]

VERY FEW people have succeeded keeping pipefish with seahorses long term.
Almost all pipefish are wild caught and as such, carry pathogens that the seahorses almost always fall victim to and die.
As mentioned, the minimum recommended size for seahorses that we get here in Canada would be 29/30g with an extra 15g for each additional pair of seahorses.
There is a lot to research before setting up for seahorse keeping if you want the best chance of success. Seahorse keeping even doing everything "by the book" is no guarantee of success.
As mentioned previously, it's best to set up a species only tank, and nothing but seahorses until you've accomplish being able to keep them for a year or so before adding tankmates.
Sometimes adding other tankmates leads to the same problem as adding pipefish, in that it introduces pathogens that the seahorses haven't grown up with and are unable to handle.
The only true captive bred seahorses coming into Canada at the moment are from Aquamarine International (reidi and comes), carried by several stores out west I believe. Size and quality of these have diminished recently though.
The others are erectus from seahorsecorral.com in Florida and available only from Sea U Marine in Markham Ontario. (He ships) These are the best conditioned seahorses I've ever seen coming into Canada.
There are a bunch of links at the bottom of "My Thoughts on Seahorse Keeping" written by experienced keepers, mostly from the "org" and one article by Dan Underwood of seahorsesource.com. You will probably have to become a member of seahorse.org to read the links that are to that site, but that is a plus thing to do anyway if you are going to keep seahorses.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Seahorse keeping also is very labour intensive and if you like to go traveling, they are a very bad idea. It's easy enough to convince a friend to pop in a feed some pellets to your fish every other day or so. It's a lot less convenient to have someone feed mysis multiple times a day (or at least one good feeding every day). They do not handle missing meals very well since in the wild, they hunt and scarf down live mysis and pods constantly. They have little reserves to handle going without being fed at least daily.

[tim the toolman]

I have hundreds upon hundreds of pods living in my current tank (180g) would it be a safe move to add a small refugium to the tank and begin the tank by adding several hundred pods into the system and allowing them to populate heavily before the introduction of the seahorses. That would allow for them to eat whatever whenever. Am I wrong in thinking this would work.