Getting Ready!

[Mental1]

I have a 65g tank that is part of about a 360g 2+ year old basement sump system. At the moment the 65g houses a matted filefish, a melanurus wrasse, 2 fu lions and a dwarf fuzzy. I have a 135g tank that I am going to set up as a separate system for all of the fish currently residing in the 65g tank. The 65g has a huge Caribbean gorg growing in it and the remaining corals are all soft corals, mushrooms, toadstools, etc. I have a fuge in the basement which is loaded with pods. I also have a 180g reef tank on this system.

So I want to put seahorses in the 65g tank. I have no problem breeding food. But I also thought it would be cool to have pipefish. So I have looked at all of the attached articles and cannot find anything about combining these two. Greg said there could be problems and I saw a reference to bacterial infections. I have no problems starting out really slowly. I do have great local support as I have a seahorse breeder who lives about 25 minutes away. I would like to read....suggestions?

 

[Mental1]

Okay so question then -- my local person breeds Hippocampus reidi - can they be kept at reef tank temps? I keep mine at about 78 degrees.

 

[Faerl]

It wouldn't be a good idea. Seahorses are found in temps that high. The problem is that my of the bacteria/diseases that can harm seahorses in large quantities also grow heavily at temps above 75. That's the reason for the temp under 74 recommendation that you see a lot of places. It's not that the seahorses can't handle higher temps, it's just that in the average aquarium we don't have the filtration of the ocean and so you increase the risk of bacteria heavily. A lot of us have reef corals though, there's a window between 72-74 where most corals are happy enough and the seahorses can be kept cool enough to decrease risk of infection. That is assuming your corals are seahorse friendly. Here's a decent site that you can check against for the most common http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/tankmates/tankmates.shtml

On pipe fish. The only risk there is that they *can* introduce diseases as well. It's not recommended that you mix seahorse species as many carry their own diseases with them that they're immune to (think chicken pox, we get it as a kid, doesn't kill us later). When you introduce another seahorse species this can sometimes be introduced to one that's not immune to it (think Europeans introducing chicken pox to the Indians). Though some haven't had the problem, it's a significant risk. Pipe fish are a distant relative to seahorses. Less likely to have it occur and many have mixed the species, but still a risk.

 

[Mental1]

Yea -- that's what I am learning. It's all soft corals so I do not think it would be a problem with the corals in fact they would like the big gorg. Just don't know how my 180g would do at the lower temps. Unless I can figure out a way to just cool the water going to that one tank -- like an inline cooler of some sort. Hmmmm.

 

[rayjay]

Why not set up the 65 as a stand alone species tank for the reidi seahorses and eliminate some of the problems possible with the mixed set up?
Some of us have even had problems with tankmates that aren't seahorses, passing on pathogens to the seahorses that they were unable to acclimate to.
This can happen with any other fish put with them, not just pipe fish.
That being said, there are systems out there such as you wish to do and are successful but unfortunately I wasn't one of the lucky ones.

 

[Mental1]

Would really like to figure out a way to make it work as the whole system. Don't want to start dragging barrels around upstairs again. Maybe add a UV in line for water going up to that tank. I may just give up and use the tank for something else. So far temperature and potential pathogens are making it work technically more complicated than I wanted.