I wanna start a seahorse tank!

[vlangel]

Jumping in to say that this is a great recommendation, and definitely something I am about to start doing myself. I have the bug, I want to start up a small seahorse tank real bad. But the work, and issues with vacations have me worried. I'll be starting live cultures soon to test if I feel this is a viable option or not for me.



Now, I understand the need to keep these tanks clean, as to not foul the water with extra bacteria. This one has me a bit stumped though. Is it less about removing food to prevent bacteria growth, and more about removing now nutrient deficient food? Because they are live, so I couldn't see them fouling much, until they die of course. I would imagine them being live and possibly reproducing would just add a bit more food for the dwarfs?

Its about both. When you have artemia nauplii in that kind of density, both they and the seahorses are giving off waste. Any wastes in any seahorse tank becomes a place where pathogenic bacteria can get fueled.

The dwarfs need optimal nutrition if they are going to flourish so you do not want them filling up on food that is the equivalent of bread crumbs.

 

[sde1500]

Its about both. When you have artemia nauplii in that kind of density, both they and the seahorses are giving off waste. Any wastes in any seahorse tank becomes a place where pathogenic bacteria can get fueled.

The dwarfs need optimal nutrition if they are going to flourish so you do not want them filling up on food that is the equivalent of bread crumbs.

Hmm, good points thank you. I'm thinking of running a continuous brine shrimp culture, now you have me thinking of a way to have them removed in a manner I can recollect them to add back to the culture, and if that is even a good idea at all lol

 

[rayjay]

You CAN run a continuous brine shrimp culture depending on what quantities you wish to harvest in a given time period.
HOWEVER, I would NEVER put artemia collected from the display tank, back into the culture as you would contaminate the culture with whatever nasty bacteria they are exposed to in the display tank. Then you would be adding already contaminated artemia to the show tank for future feedings which can then increase the density of those nasties in the showtank.
Nasty bacteria like the vibrio species are the single biggest cause of seahorse problems IMO.
I grow out the artemia in 26g Rubbermaid garbage pails and they eventually will give birth to liveborn nauplii as long as conditions are right.
Without laboratory conditions though, the process takes quite a period of time, depending on the ambient temperatures you use.
I have my setup in a room in the basement where temperatures range from 59° to 68°F depending on night/day/summer/winter and about 20 years ago I was using heaters to promote faster growth to adult stage, but, I ended up with ALSO promoting the growth of bacteria in the cultures. This severely increased the numbers of failures in the batches, AND, increased the chances of passing the nasties on to the seahorses, even though I use hydrogen peroxide before using them as feed for the seahorses.
Now, I just grow them in the cool temps and I never have a crash. I live with the 6-8 weeks to get to the reproduction stage by strategic planning and sufficient containers.
I seldom, however, harvest the liveborn nauplii as I feel it's easier to start a new culture with newly hatched nauplii. However, there ARE times where I will harvest the liveborn but it depends on just how many happen to be present when I'm doing a water change as it means using separate sized mesh to remove first the adults and then fine mesh to remove the nauplii. The fine mesh to remove the nauplii ALSO captures a lot of the detritus/feces crap even if I let the culture sit for 12 hours before I harvest.
In any case, I would never have enough liveborn to be the only means of maintaining sufficient live food for what my needs are.

 

[sde1500]

You CAN run a continuous brine shrimp culture depending on what quantities you wish to harvest in a given time period.
HOWEVER, I would NEVER put artemia collected from the display tank, back into the culture as you would contaminate the culture with whatever nasty bacteria they are exposed to in the display tank. Then you would be adding already contaminated artemia to the show tank for future feedings which can then increase the density of those nasties in the showtank.
Nasty bacteria like the vibrio species are the single biggest cause of seahorse problems IMO.
I grow out the artemia in 26g Rubbermaid garbage pails and they eventually will give birth to liveborn nauplii as long as conditions are right.
Without laboratory conditions though, the process takes quite a period of time, depending on the ambient temperatures you use.
I have my setup in a room in the basement where temperatures range from 59° to 68°F depending on night/day/summer/winter and about 20 years ago I was using heaters to promote faster growth to adult stage, but, I ended up with ALSO promoting the growth of bacteria in the cultures. This severely increased the numbers of failures in the batches, AND, increased the chances of passing the nasties on to the seahorses, even though I use hydrogen peroxide before using them as feed for the seahorses.
Now, I just grow them in the cool temps and I never have a crash. I live with the 6-8 weeks to get to the reproduction stage by strategic planning and sufficient containers.
I seldom, however, harvest the liveborn nauplii as I feel it's easier to start a new culture with newly hatched nauplii. However, there ARE times where I will harvest the liveborn but it depends on just how many happen to be present when I'm doing a water change as it means using separate sized mesh to remove first the adults and then fine mesh to remove the nauplii. The fine mesh to remove the nauplii ALSO captures a lot of the detritus/feces crap even if I let the culture sit for 12 hours before I harvest.
In any case, I would never have enough liveborn to be the only means of maintaining sufficient live food for what my needs are.

Thanks for the response! Yea likely they’d just end up being tossed in my big tank. I already have a small farm so don’t mind having to deal with feeding animals daily. Just formulating ideas for what to do over vacations. The farm animals can feed themselves. These horses can’t long term. Think that running cultures of brine shrimp plus a pelagic copepod like Parvocalanus crassirostris would give me some critters I could add a lot of to the tank right before leaving. Big cleaning before leaving, add a ton of pods and shrimp and a big cleaning soon after returning.

 

[rayjay]

Even with that food, I'd not leave them more than 3 days. The parvo are VERY small even for dwarfs and it would take an inordinate amount to be of any value food wise. I have adult rotifers that get to 2mm which is bigger than adult parvo.

 

[sde1500]

Even with that food, I'd not leave them more than 3 days. The parvo are VERY small even for dwarfs and it would take an inordinate amount to be of any value food wise. I have adult rotifers that get to 2mm which is bigger than adult parvo.

Yea they are tiny. Just hard to find many sources of other pelagic pods. Though found Acartia tonsa so those may be better. Not a great selection out there beyond the standard tigger and Tisbe

 

[Wolf89]

Not to hijack the thread, but if I were to get a 5 gallon tank, how many dwarf seahorses could I keep in it? A website says that you can have 4 per gallon. Is that true? Also, if they need the bruneshrimp immediately after they hatch, then why not add the eggs directly to the eggs and the next day, do a water change and add more eggs? How many brine would they need?

 

[sde1500]

Not to hijack the thread, but if I were to get a 5 gallon tank, how many dwarf seahorses could I keep in it? A website says that you can have 4 per gallon. Is that true? Also, if they need the bruneshrimp immediately after they hatch, then why not add the eggs directly to the eggs and the next day, do a water change and add more eggs? How many brine would they need?

Eggs are dirty and would foul the water. Plus from my reading, the bbs would be using the egg sac upon birth thus would quickly become nutrient deficient. Once they develop a stomach and can be gut loaded they have less of a shell for the horses to deal with, plus the gut loading allows them to carry much more nutrients to the horses.

 

[rayjay]

Not to hijack the thread, but if I were to get a 5 gallon tank, how many dwarf seahorses could I keep in it?

I've had no problem with up to 50 dwarfs in a 5g tank that is barebottom, artificial hitching, open ended airlines for water motion and frequent cleaning and water changes.

if they need the bruneshrimp immediately after they hatch, then why not add the eggs directly to the eggs and the next day, do a water change and add more eggs? How many brine would they need?

First of all, artemia cysts are KNOWN to harbour nasty bacteria and adding the cysts to the tank water are going to increase the risk of the dwarfs getting bacterial diseases which seahorses of all species are known to be extremely susceptible to. Also, if fish ingest the empty cysts or unhatched cysts, it is known to at times block their digestive tract.
Next, feeding newborn nauplii to the dwarfs is NOT recommended. One, because they hatch out at varying times so when introduced as food have varying levels of nutrients. Also, they don't have the needed level of DHA for sustained long life of dwarfs.
Two, the carpace of the Instar I stage of the artemia is extremely tough and that makes it much less digestible, also meaning less nutritious.
The recommendation for dwarf feeding is to sterilize the cysts, hatch out the nauplii, grow out for a day until they reach Instar II stage where they complete the digestive tract and can be fed, and then gut load them for 12 hours with an appropriate enrichment like Algamac 3050 or the mix Dan's Feed from seahorsesource.com. They can be further enriched by then placing them in new water and new enrichment for a further 12 hours at which time the nutrition will have accumulated into their flesh for a more nutritious food. I recommend giving them a peroxide treatment BEFORE using them as food, again to reduce the chances of the seahorses getting bacterial problems.
As for how many brine needed, it is not a practice to specify a number but rather note that the need is to have a feeding density of the food such that the dwarfs can snick it up while it passes by them wherever they are hitched. Dwarfs, for the most part but not exclusively, tend to be lazy feeders and rather than hunt down their food like the larger cousins would do, prefer to snick up what passes by them. Such density means that by the next feed time, there are STILL a lot of artemia remaining in the tank but now that they are nutrient deficient they should be removed before the new enriched food is placed in the tank.

 

[sde1500]

Continuing my musings, do you have any experience with mysid shrimp and their efficacy at eating brine shrimp that the dwarfs do not?

I feel like if I do start a tank later this year I'll likely be experimenting a bit and pushing the envelop with a dwarf tank. Wouldn't be set up until vacations for the year are over, so that would be ideal for gaining some experience with the tank, letting the tank mature, plus finding what the tank can handle.

 

[Lucie]

I have dwarfs since nearly 2 years now.
First, they breed like crazy, they are saltwater guppies. So even if the lifespawn is short, you will have a constant turnover.
They are cute but a constant slavery. Decapsulating eggs, hatching, transfering, enriching, cleaning, sterilizing... i don t even talk about tank maintenance!
If you want to keep them sucessfully you will need to be very regular in maintenance, hygiena and care.
In a 10 gallons you can easily have more than 200. Yes, 200!
Most people don t realise that they are really small... Smaller than expected.
If personaly find them less interesting to watch than bigger species, they have less personality and are not as familiar than regular seahorses.
A lot of people want dwarfs, but they don t keep them more than 6 months usually, because they give up on proper feeding/hatching/enriching, they give up on maintenance or they didn t set up the tank properly and didn t do the right precautions about hydroids or other harmfull hitchikers

You should look at this exellent video Kelly made about dwarf seahorses

 

[Lucie]

Continuing my musings, do you have any experience with mysid shrimp and their efficacy at eating brine shrimp that the dwarfs do not?

I feel like if I do start a tank later this year I'll likely be experimenting a bit and pushing the envelop with a dwarf tank. Wouldn't be set up until vacations for the year are over, so that would be ideal for gaining some experience with the tank, letting the tank mature, plus finding what the tank can handle.

Live mysis do very well with dwarfs. They will eat BBS and won t touch dwarf fry. They will provide food also with newborn mysis BUT mysis don t live long and you can t expect to have a renewed population, so you will need to regulary put new adults in the tank

 

[sde1500]

I have dwarfs since nearly 2 years now.
First, they breed like crazy, they are saltwater guppies. So even if the lifespawn is short, you will have a constant turnover.
They are cute but a constant slavery. Decapsulating eggs, hatching, transfering, enriching, cleaning, sterilizing... i don t even talk about tank maintenance!
If you want to keep them sucessfully you will need to be very regular in maintenance, hygiena and care.
In a 10 gallons you can easily have more than 200. Yes, 200!
Most people don t realise that they are really small... Smaller than expected.
If personaly find them less interesting to watch than bigger species, they have less personality and are not as familiar than regular seahorses.
A lot of people want dwarfs, but they don t keep them more than 6 months usually, because they give up on proper feeding/hatching/enriching, they give up on maintenance or they didn t set up the tank properly and didn t do the right precautions about hydroids or other harmfull hitchikers

You should look at this exellent video Kelly made about dwarf seahorses

Excellent video thank you. So how do you prevent them from over running a tank through breeding regularly, as I assume could happen? I'd imagine as they multiply the work to continue feeding gets intensive.

Definitely would be starting a tank dry rock, but had considered adding some macros to the tank for a more natural look and feel. Doing some research on if panacur will damage them too much, but any thoughts? I'd assume a dry rock start would be safe, but adding some macros adds a risk of adding hydroids, so I'd do some preventative dosing.

 

[rayjay]

Excellent video thank you. So how do you prevent them from over running a tank through breeding regularly, as I assume could happen? I'd imagine as they multiply the work to continue feeding gets intensive.

In my OWN experience, they didn't really overrun the tank as they don't continue breeding through to their end lifespan. Anecdotally, I'm guessing most stopped producing fry at just over a year old. This means that you need to remove AT LEAST some of the fry to put in another tank(s) to know basic age of what you have and when they may stop producing. That would ALSO be a back up situation if one tank experiences a wipe out for any reason.
I never had a hydroid problem with my dwarfs, but I used a completely sterile tank set up with sterile live rock, bare bottom, open ended air lines for water movement, and artificial hitching.

 

[sde1500]

In my OWN experience, they didn't really overrun the tank as they don't continue breeding through to their end lifespan. Anecdotally, I'm guessing most stopped producing fry at just over a year old. This means that you need to remove AT LEAST some of the fry to put in another tank(s) to know basic age of what you have and when they may stop producing. That would ALSO be a back up situation if one tank experiences a wipe out for any reason.
I never had a hydroid problem with my dwarfs, but I used a completely sterile tank set up with sterile live rock, bare bottom, open ended air lines for water movement, and artificial hitching.

Thanks, something to think about. Def using dry rock to start, but would like some real macros in there. Realistically, just need to convince the wife we should just go for it and set up another big tank for big seahorses lol.