Dwarf Seahorses

[Triggerman]

if anyone wants to checkout these little guys i have a picture posted on my image gallery. you'll have to look at them full screen since these guys are just a hair under 1 inch from head to tail. they're in my refugium for now attacking the pods even the ones as big as their heads. there permanent home is going to be a 16 gal. fantasy bowl which will house a colony of about 12 of them.

ray

[newtosa]

Ray,

Just put together your handle with your name. I'm very interested in this. What is your feeding regimen for the seahorses?

I've never had them before, but my wife loves them, and I'm entertaining the idea of getting a couple and incorporating them into my system (in their own tank, of course).

Very cool pic. Can you get a close-up photo posted?

BTW, thanks for the chaetomorpha. Really appreciate it.

Dean

[Triggerman]

they're so many different sp. of seahorse available the ones i have are hippocampus zosterae the dwarf sp. out of the carribean. since these guys are so small max size 2" they need to be feed constantly, newly hatched brine to start out with and sometimes they'll start going after frozen baby brine or frozen mysis shrimp after a while but that's a big maybe with these guys. its really easy to hatch your own brine with the little hatchery and hatch mix sold by s.f. bay. i've also bought live brine that fintique sells and majority are too big for them but they can eat the smaller ones. although i currently have them in my refugium and they go after the sm. copepods which makes them easy to care for, the pods are their main diet in the wild. your best bet if you want some is to devote a system to just them, you can house a pair or sm. colony with ease in a 3 or 6 gal. eclipse or those 7 gal mini bow tanks are fine all would magnify them since they're bowfront(someone was trying to sell one about a month ago on here). main thing is to have adequate filtration coinsidering the lg. amount of food supply with low flow. i really enjoy the dwarf species rather than the lager ones since they readily adapt to a sm. system. i'll try to get more pics up zoomed in.


ray

[Janice]

My guys just eat pods nowadays.. I put the BBS in there and they hardly even give it a second glance. :-D I'm glad, I am no more a slave to the BS hatchery!

It's pretty easy to setup a tank for these guys, just put a fine mesh grating over any intakes (they love to get stuck to them). :-o I used the mesh from window screens or doors.

[newtosa]

Thanks Ray and Janice.

Janice - does this mean you've gotten your tank to the point that all their food is provided by only the pods growing in the tank? Or even mostly by the pods growing in your tank?

I think seahorses are cool, but the main reason I've never bought any is that I can't keep animals that require daily feeding to survive. Not to mention 2x or 3x daily feeding. If it's possible to get enough live food growing and/or keep few enough SH's, this becomes something I might want to do.

Thanks,
Dean

[Janice]

Thanks Ray and Janice.

Janice - does this mean you've gotten your tank to the point that all their food is provided by only the pods growing in the tank? Or even mostly by the pods growing in your tank?

I think seahorses are cool, but the main reason I've never bought any is that I can't keep animals that require daily feeding to survive. Not to mention 2x or 3x daily feeding. If it's possible to get enough live food growing and/or keep few enough SH's, this becomes something I might want to do.

Thanks,
Dean

Dean,

LR is considered a very bad move in Dwarf SH tanks but I ended up doing it anyway but I didn't want much of a cycle. I do have a moderate population of hydroids but my horses are adults so I am not terribly worried.

I thought I was prepared for the daily BS hatching but I wasn't. I ended up sometimes missing a day of feeding and noticed no difference or unhealthy traits in my dwarves (i.e. - sunken bellies, listlessness). Then one day I saw my larger female sitting in the LR very still.. wouldn't you know it she was hunting pods! I saw her snick one up right in front of me. They most likely came in with the LR and now I have so many of them I see them running all over my glass and everytime I clean the filter I have dozens of dead ones (from the hot water) fall out.

I do still hatch BS but I don't do it everyday anymore, I hatch 1/4 teaspoon it lasts for 2-3 days then I go 1-2 days between hatches and start again. So I am not down to "just" pods at the moment, but it's much easier than it was before.

Most people who have work, friends, and family (a normal life) _don't_ have time to hatch everyday. It's something you have to find out the hard way most the time. :(

[Triggerman]

my dwarf seahorses didn't take long to reproduce. after about 3 weeks of having the seahorses in my refugium my male dwarf has given birth to about 5 baby ponies. they're hard to see since they're only about a 1/4 inch long, but they're already hunting down pods. alot of the pods are just as big as they are but they're trying. i tried to take pictures but even with the zoom they barely came out.

ray