dwarf tank water quality?

[Eud]

I've been reading about reef keeping for about a year now preparing to take the plunge and only reading about seahorse keeping for a couple of weeks. I've taken in the stuff on RayJay's site, on the FusedJaw site, on the articles at seahorse.org and browsed around at seahorsesource.com. Also read on this forum and one other. I think I get what dwarf seahorses require, small tanks, lots of baby brine shrimp, no pests or predators, etc.

It just seems like the small tank requirement and the large feeding requirement combine to make water quality a real challenge with dwarfs. In a reef tank everyone always says bigger is easier for reasons I can understand, but even with a very large system usually heroic lengths are used to keep water column nutrients very low. On seahorse sites, however, I seem to see people happily keeping 5 gallon dwarf seahorse tanks dumping in teaspoons of baby brine shrimp 2-3 times per day with nothing but HOB biowheel filters, limited live rock, low flow, and fake plants. Does everyone with a teensy dwarf tank have it hooked up to a 50 gallon sump with a big skimmer for nutrient export and a chiller or something? How would you even plumb a 5g tank for a sump since the walls are too thin to drill for overflows and a HOB overflow would suck down all the fry? Do people do 50% water changes per week in their 5 gallons of seawater? I just kind of don't get how you do it to keep the water quality good with such a large amount of feeding, and the articles I've found seem to deal with tank construction or specifics of animal care without going in to how to keep the water clean. Seems like bare bottom would help because you could suck out the crud before it turned into nitrate, but that's not so nice looking to me.

I think one of the new 5 gallon Fluval Spec V tanks would make a very pretty dwarf seahorse tank, but I can't really figure out the water quality question after reading a bunch of sites. Are seahorses fine with way more nitrates than a reef would tolerate maybe? If so, maybe a dwarf seahorse/xenia/gorgonian/snails/macro tank with the stock Fluval V lighting would work out if I could just do a small water change per week since the Xenia likes it dirtier.

 

[Geraud]

Hi there,

I am keeping dwarf seahorses in a 5 gallon (Ecopico), with a small red-sea hang-on filter (I use carbon as the filter media), and an air-powered small skimmer.

The tank contains some "dead" live rock, about an inch of sand, 20 or so dwarves (from 6 adults), 3 sexy shrimps, a Nassarius snail, some amphipods (that I am slowly removing after reading they can attack the babies... which I have not seen so far). Algae: Caulerpa taxifolia.

Every week I change 10% of the water, clean the mechanical (sponge) on the intake of the filter, clean up the collection cup.

I do feed 2-3 times a day with enriched brine shrimp.

I would avoid connecting to a larger tank as sadly the main problem would be the low flow: how to keep a low flow while still maintaining good water circulation between the two tanks? Maybe some kind of net would work? In this case I would imagine the H. zosterae being a section of the big tank rather than being "connected" to it.

 

[Eud]

Thanks. Sounds like a good plan. 10% water change per week is easy to handle. Esp when compared to daily feedings of live brine shrimp babies, heh.

 

[Geraud]

The feeding part is actually not that bad.

I have three soda bottles lit with LED's (12hours a day), and I "mark" the one that is to be used for the day.

In the morning, I harvest (using a turkey baster) some of the bbs in a sieve, which I rinse under tap water. Remove as much water as possible, then dunk in the main tank.

In the evening, I harvest a second time, same thing, but move the mark to the next bottle. I then add two small measures of decapsulated eggs to the "used" bottle, and add a bit of enrichment product to the "next" one.

So overall I have one bottle "hatching" one "growing" one "enriching" which is the one used to harvest from.

I clean each container with the following cycle: when bottle n has had 2 refillings, bottle n+1 will get cleaned and restarted at the end of the day. It is not that bad of a chore and works pretty well.

To me the hardest part initially was decapsulating the eggs. But there are plenty of videos online to help you with that.

 

[rayjay]

I use no sumps for dwarfs, only the display tanks.
My tanks are bare bottom with a couple of small pieces of "dead" live rock that were cycled at startup. I have plastic hitches and bare bottom to make cleaning easier.
I vacuum out any found debris as I find it and replace removed water with new.
I change out about 50% of the water about weekly.
I use open air lines in the tanks for water movement.
I have a Marina 125 (I think it is) internal filter, hooked up so it sits higher in the tank to reduce the flow through it. This is on a timer that comes on after the dwarfs have had plenty of time to feed, and it runs for about 2 1/2 hours, removing the brine that are not eaten. I clean the filter out about every two days, which, being so small, is quick and easy.
I ALWAYS feed ongrown enriched bbs. (enriched with Dans Feed)
I only hatch out once a week.
I enrich daily, the amount I need for the day with the others left to keep growing. They grow slow at room temperature so they are still small enough to use up until the new batch is hatched out a week later.

 

[Eud]

Thanks, Rayjay. I was hoping you'd reply. 50 percent water change weekly is no joke, but the tanks are so small it doesn't end up so bad. It's good to hear your routine. It kind of sounds like your dwarf tank is more utilitarian and I was looking to do something more decorative with sand and live plant and such. Would seed tank with a bit of dry pukani from BRS or something. Let it do long cure and cycle and attempt to run it with pods and plants only for a few months while watching temps before getting horses. Interesting use of timed filter to clear out the uneaten brine. I had been wondering if removal was needed at all or if theyd just live for some time and get bigger until something ate them or they died.

 

[DanU]

My own experience is that survival rates and reproduction rates are higher when running better filtration. We do it commercially but if I was to setup a personal zosterae tank for display, I would probably use a 5 to 8 gallon tank drilled and connected to a sump where I could run the filtration I want. Our protein skimmer on the zosterae system goes nuts with all the brine shrimp.

Dan

 

[Eud]

Ok, thanks Dan. Maybe a 5 gallon acrylic could be drilled where a 5 glass is just too fragile. Or maybe a small custom glass tank with thicker material than an off the shelf one.

 

[rayjay]

I had been wondering if removal was needed at all or if theyd just live for some time and get bigger until something ate them or they died.

For me, I just don't want the dwarfs feeding on bbs that have lost their enriched condition so I remove them before the next feeding.
I also don't want them to die and decay causing more water problems.
If I was going to sump the DT I would probably just build an overflow for it instead of drilling.
All my drilled tanks were drilled from the inside outward and that wouldn't work with a small tank.

 

[Eud]

So Rayjay and/or Dan,

Seems like full sized H. Erectus or little guys H. Zosterea are the two that most people start on with seahorses. Each have different challenges. Seems like the full sized ones have challenges around keeping temp stable and all of the extra costs associated with setting up a larger tank (more expensive skimmers, more sand and rock and plants to keep clean, maybe more expensive lighting for macro algae, bigger chillers and plumbing issues) and the dwarfs have some challenges like daily live feeding, water quality in such a small tank, dealing with fry more often.

Which do you think are more fun to have around? Do you find one "easier" than the other as far as keeping them thriving and healthy?

 

[Eud]

Also, if they bear fry as often as some of the seahorse info sources say, how do you handle the population problems? Do most of them just die off (I assume this isn't what's happening with Dan since he raises them commercially)? Do you just end up giving them away to friends or setting up more and more tanks to hold them? Or do you quietly feed them to a really mean angler fish or anemone in a reef tank somewhere? heh

 

[rayjay]

Seahorses don't always co-operate and produce fry.
If they do, then the next thing is to find the "touch" to get them to survive.
Not too many succeed or attempt it and many just leave the fry to the filtration to catch up.
Preference as to dwarf or standard is quite subjective and you will get a variety of opinion on that.
Dwarfs have the same needs as standards for the most part but have the additional need of live enriched food.

 

[jskim4]

i have been doing a ton of reading on several forums about trying to house dwarf seahorses my buddy left for the navy and gave me this 5 gallon hex tank and was wondering if i can possibly turn it into a seahorse tank <a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2eywgao" target="_blank"><img src="http://i40.tinypic.com/2eywgao.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>
<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2je2pfa" target="_blank"><img src="http://i43.tinypic.com/2je2pfa.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

 

[jskim4]

or should i use a sump and provide cleaner water?

 

[rayjay]

or should i use a sump and provide cleaner water?

Adding the sump doesn't in itself provide cleaner water. It only makes things more forgiving in that it takes longer to get the water "dirty".
It's the filtration that is going to provide the cleaner water.
In my case, I prefer to do more water changes as it's cheap when you consider the tank size. I probably change 50% twice a week.

 

[DanU]

What Ray said is true, but the sump gives the advantage that you can run bigger and better filtration so that incoming water to the tank is of higher quality. Also setup properly, you can adjust flow rates during feeding and off feeding times.

Dan

 

[jskim4]

Thanks gents turns out in florida its illegal to keep dwarfs in tanks so I guess im off to a different build! its a big bummer though I really wanted to do a seahorse tank

 

[rayjay]

Try telling that to the many Florida dwarf owners and the at least two commercial breeders of them that I'm aware of, both in Florida.

 

[DanU]

H. zosterae has been petitioned to be on the ESA list but a determination has yet to be made or made public. Unless that happens, they are still legal. ESA listing would be for the whole country, not just the state of Florida.

Dan