Considering dwarf seahorses. Talk me out of it!

[ichthyogeek]

Most of the articles I've come across online state that you keep the dwarves in smaller tanks in order to concentrate food to minimize food wastage + rotting. It'd be like trying to broadcast feed in a 3000 gallon aquarium in order to feed a pair of clowns if you did it in a 55.

As for the needing more than just BBS, from what I understand it's more due to not feeding immediately after the brine shrimp hatch (hence, why I advocated for feeding the NHBBS, as opposed to BBS), which allows for wastage of BBS nutrition. Dosing copepods regularly would certainly help with maintaining nutrition for the horses though.

...I'm really not good at this whole "talk person out of buying X fish" am I....

 

[Tankkeepers]

Good luck I started them in a 5 gallon tank and found out really really quick the nutrients couldn't be controled as they miss most of the food and I did not broadcast feed I target fed but do whatever you want I wish you the best of luck and hope you dont kill them I'm only telling you what I know from having them for 8 year's

 

[Tankkeepers]

Newly hatched bbs are not all that healthy the yolk they hatch with does not have all the nessisarly nutrition for them and should never ever be used as a sole food source used to breed cardinal fish also I had 8 hatcherys going and timed out so that they were used within hours of being hatched

 

[Tankkeepers]

Again do as you wish but a 4 gallon tank is not going to go well for you in the long run

 

[Tankkeepers]

Interesting. I am not set in my ways and can totally be talked out of this but everything I have read has talked about small tanks (3-10g) for dwarfs and you are talking about a 55g?? How would they even find the bbs in a 55? Can you please provide me with some links or articles about needing bigger tanks for them? I don't want to argue with someone with experience with seahorses (as I have none) but every page I look at talks about small tanks for them...

Fwiw I currently have a baby brine shrimp hatchery going and a copapod breeding bucket...

I used a turkey baster and had them trained to vome to the end of the turkey baster and eat as I pushed alittle out at a time they only was able to catch 20 to 30 percent as tje bbs swam better then they did

So one think I had an idea about is pulling water daily from the 4 gallon to fill the hatchery and then replace that water daily with new then use a smaller micron sized siv to get the bbq out of the old water and then backflush the bbq into the tank that way your changing a portion of the water every day ? Just a thought

 

[Tankkeepers]

Vuz it sounds like your up to the challange of geeding them and long term care which is good and they are the cutest things iv ever had the pleasure of taking care of(except my newborn doughter) so id rather try and help you find a way to make it work as id hate for you to miss out on these little guys

 

[Tankkeepers]

Also u can culture pods pretty easily so that's not that big of a deal but they really do need mkre then just newly hatch bbq as those are mostly just fat

 

[Tankkeepers]

Its the amino acids that is the primary problem in newly hatch baby brine shrimp you would most likly be better of waiting for mouths to form and then gut loading them with spiralina

 

[Tankkeepers]

Or culture pods rotifers and bbq for them so they get everything they need to thrive not just not starve to death

 

[Tankkeepers]

Whatever you do chose to do I really hope you have success with them but I still think that one of the smaller sea horses that can be trained to take frozen food would be better in a Pico tank as you would be able to only give them what they will eat with cllse to 0 waste

 

[Tankkeepers]

Also if your already have pods and bbs then your probly ok with feeding those 2 things alone as the pods are feed well I assume since you have dragonnetts

 

[Tankkeepers]

Keeping Dwarf Seahorses

Keeping Dwarf Seahorses : Over my life time I've had a number of exotic pets, and dwarf seahorses have been by far some of the most interesting to observe. My mom owned an aquarium business when I was growing up and we previously kept regular tank raised seahorses, so I felt…

www.google.com

 

[Tankkeepers]

Thats a very good artical to get you started I'm not saying they need a large tank what I'm trying to say is they need very good water which js almost impossible in a 4 gallon when feeding somthing that misses most of the food and is left to rot

 

[Tankkeepers]

And that newly hatched baby brine shrimp alone is not enoff

 

[Tankkeepers]

Good luck and best wishes and the dwarfs were my wifes idea also and she did help with feeding etc so if you do get them your should definitely help you my wife spent hours a day with them and probly did more then I did for them once I showed her how

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Again do as you wish but a 4 gallon tank is not going to go well for you in the long run

Hey I appreciate your input. How many horses did you start with? Would I be better off with just a pair? And rehoming future babies? Or you mentioned another species being better for my tank size, can you elaborate on that? I just assumed bigger horses wouldn't like such a small tank but I have no clue

I like your idea of small daily water changes when adding the brine shrimp/copapods. Maybe I can do that plus 50% weekly water changes. Seems doable in such a small tank.

Let me know what you think, I have no interest in getting them if they aren't gonna thrive.

 

[deetu]

I've been reading all the back posts and you will find that so many people have so many ideas. I did the dwarfs...noticed the did part. I was very successful but spent so much time doing the bbs that I didn't want to continue but as you stated, you already do bbs and have copepods so you are ahead of the game.

I started with a 2.5 gallon tank (with breeder box added for media and extra water) and 6 ponies... 2 died from stupid mistakes so was down to 4 but quickly got up to 32. At that point I decided to move to 7.5 gallon tank. I decided to get out when I had an ammonia spike that kill 12 ponies, I had 56 left but also two new births with 15 more. One site argues that you have to have a 10 gallon tank to keep the bio right but when you only have 6 ponies, it is really hard to see them or keep enough bbs in there for them to eat. They do not hunt (will not eat anything dead) and wait for the food to float by.

Best to enrich the bbs and keep them rotating. You do this after they are day old in different container. I rotated different vitamins, Selcon, Zoe and mostly Dan's Feed from Seahorse Source and also newly hatched, especially if I had new born ponies. I would put enough in to make the tank look like a snowglobe. At night I would put in new hatched bbs (I'm a late sleeper and they would eat at dawn) then would shut off the filter in the morning and put a spot light that would bring the bbs to that spot so I could scoop out with bbs net or turkey baster (best tool for dwarf) and then put new enriched bbs in since the nutrients would be depleted if left the ones in there.

I would take out water from the bottom twice a day, sucking out all the dead bbs and poopies. I ended up going bare bottom in order to be able to see that... tried the sand first but this made it easier.

Be sure to cover all your intakes with sponges so they don't get sucked in.
Make sure you rinse the bbs with freshwater to kill any hydroids before feeding. And if you use Fen to kill hydroids in tank, you cannot put any rock back into your other tank. The fen stays in the rock and will kill your coral.

This is the 2.5 gallon with the last of the ponies getting ready to go to new home... I couldn't find older picture of one with macro and more ponies in it

This was the 7.5 before removing sand and

after that made the care easier

last, my hatching and enriching system

 

[Tankkeepers]

I started with 2 pairs of dwarf sea horses and they breed like guppys so if you go that route have a plan to get rid of alot of them

Also I'm not sure the height vs width of your tank but my first thought was somthing like a lined seahorses they get 5 to 6 inches long can be frozen trained will eat out of your hand live up to 4 years and I was thinking 1 as an alternative honestly tho a 4 gal pic is not much it terms of bioload avaliblity seahorses dont really care much about swimmjng so as long as they can stretch out fully and turn around they are happy

If you do go the dwarf route id only get 1 pair to start as that pair will turn into more then you know what to do with

Really tho even they should be kept in no less then 10 gallons but I think if you did daily water changes as I mentioned before and kept the water clean that way they would be ok in 4 gallons I would definatly add some clerpa or come type of branching macro to help with nutrent control and so they have more places to grab also a small pile of rock rubble in the corner would help keeping a pod population in tank for them

 

[Tankkeepers]

Also see above post they make some very good points about bare bottom and care required

 

[Tankkeepers]

I've been reading all the back posts and you will find that so many people have so many ideas. I did the dwarfs...noticed the did part. I was very successful but spent so much time doing the bbs that I didn't want to continue but as you stated, you already do bbs and have copepods so you are ahead of the game.

I started with a 2.5 gallon tank (with breeder box added for media and extra water) and 6 ponies... 2 died from stupid mistakes so was down to 4 but quickly got up to 32. At that point I decided to move to 7.5 gallon tank. I decided to get out when I had an ammonia spike that kill 12 ponies, I had 56 left but also two new births with 15 more. One site argues that you have to have a 10 gallon tank to keep the bio right but when you only have 6 ponies, it is really hard to see them or keep enough bbs in there for them to eat. They do not hunt (will not eat anything dead) and wait for the food to float by.

Best to enrich the bbs and keep them rotating. You do this after they are day old in different container. I rotated different vitamins, Selcon, Zoe and mostly Dan's Feed from Seahorse Source and also newly hatched, especially if I had new born ponies. I would put enough in to make the tank look like a snowglobe. At night I would put in new hatched bbs (I'm a late sleeper and they would eat at dawn) then would shut off the filter in the morning and put a spot light that would bring the bbs to that spot so I could scoop out with bbs net or turkey baster (best tool for dwarf) and then put new enriched bbs in since the nutrients would be depleted if left the ones in there.

I would take out water from the bottom twice a day, sucking out all the dead bbs and poopies. I ended up going bare bottom in order to be able to see that... tried the sand first but this made it easier.

Be sure to cover all your intakes with sponges so they don't get sucked in.
Make sure you rinse the bbs with freshwater to kill any hydroids before feeding. And if you use Fen to kill hydroids in tank, you cannot put any rock back into your other tank. The fen stays in the rock and will kill your coral.

This is the 2.5 gallon with the last of the ponies getting ready to go to new home... I couldn't find older picture of one with macro and more ponies in it

This was the 7.5 before removing sand and

after that made the care easier

last, my hatching and enriching system

Love your hatcherys I used 2 litter bottles upside down with a hole in the top to let out pressure and a hole in the cap with an air line sealed and air stone