Seahorse display refugium?

[Neeks]

Hello I'm plumbing a 18 inch cube aquarium to my 60 cube and going for a macroalgae/ refugium with seahorses. Right now I have it plumbed to the sump and have live sand and dry rocks. I put everything from my old in-sump refugium. I'm wondering if I could get some advice from people who have done this or something similar? What kind of macroalgae, gorgonia or sponges would be good for this? Also any seahorse type or number suggestions? Thank you

 

[fishguy242]

bump

 

[rayjay]

I personally wouldn't recommend seahorses for that setup.
First, the recommendation is 30g minimum for one pair of standard seahorses and that is probably 25g at best.
Next, the system you are connected to is probably warmer than what is best for seahorse long term viability because of their affinity to bacterial infections. (68-74°F).
The inhabitants of the system may also expose the seahorses to pathogens they haven't grown up with and that's probably the number 2 seahorse problem.
As seahorses are a very "dirty" fish, there are some sps corals if you have them in the main tank, that won't do well in time.

 

[Neeks]

ok that is great info thank you. Would it be the same for captive bred dwarfs seahorses?

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

@matchmakersmagic

 

[fishguy242]

@Paulie069

 

[rayjay]

With dwarfs you have ADDED problems. First of all, the water flow may be problematic for them and intake coverage much more severe because they are so small, averaging about an inch in size. (3-4 cover a silver dollar) Hard to even find them in a 25g tank.
Because they need to be fed enriched live brine nauplii, and because dwarfs prefer to stay hitched and wait for the food to pass close enough to snick without leaving their hitch, density of the food would be prohibitive for that size tank. Even for a 5g, I had ~50 dwarfs and that wasn't too bad, but if you only have about 10 it's better to have a 2.5g tank.
Are you aware of the work involve in hatching and enriching brine nauplii for feeding dwarfs?

 

[Neeks]

With dwarfs you have ADDED problems. First of all, the water flow may be problematic for them and intake coverage much more severe because they are so small, averaging about an inch in size. (3-4 cover a silver dollar) Hard to even find them in a 25g tank.
Because they need to be fed enriched live brine nauplii, and because dwarfs prefer to stay hitched and wait for the food to pass close enough to snick without leaving their hitch, density of the food would be prohibitive for that size tank. Even for a 5g, I had ~50 dwarfs and that wasn't too bad, but if you only have about 10 it's better to have a 2.5g tank.
Are you aware of the work involve in hatching and enriching brine nauplii for feeding dwarfs?

Yes I've done some research. And that is why in asking on here..

 

[Paulie069]

@Paulie069

I’ll let rayjay handle this one,, I personally wouldn’t put any ponies down there

 

[Neeks]

Ok sounds good. Thank you all for the help

 

[rayjay]

I can't really help any more than that. My answers are not necessarily the only answers, but all I can say based on my years in the hobby.
There are many people who have set up systems that don't fit conventional wisdom of the time and succeed, but, the percentage of successes compared to attempts would be small.
I was just talking with Dan Underwood of seahorse source on Wine Wednesday with the Seahorse Whisperer and he too feels the success rate is low. His feeling too is the number one problem would be the temperature being too high because of what the system needs for the main tank.