How long do you let your setup mature?

[Northside Reef]

I started a seahorse tank back on February 3rd. Nothing but macro and a few snails in it so far. I've added a bunch of pods and so far just feeding them and watching the population grow. My Mysid Shrimp experiment was a failure. they never took to the tank. I probably need to do some more research there.

But I would like the pod population to be as high as I can get it to help with the acclimation. The tanks is a 92 gallon cube and I want to get two pairs of Hippocampus Reidi in there. I am just curious how long most of you let a tank mature before you add the seahorses. the cycle finished weeks ago.

 

[namxas]

Assuming you're "ghost feeding" the tank, the best thing to do is challenge the tank with an equivalent feeding, and see how long it takes for the NH3 spike to be processed.

 

[rayjay]

Your "current tank info" states that your tanks are all "tied together".
If that IS the case, how are you keeping the water in the seahorse tank in the recommended 68° to 74°F range when abouit 3/4 of the system water will be warmer?
I see also a potential for pathogen transfer from other fish in the system, to seahorses that don't do well with pathogens they haven't grown up with.
Regarding temperatures, see post #5 by pledoscophy
I agree with the "challenge the tank" method. I would add enough ammonia to get a reading of 1ppm and see if it clears overnight.
However, I expect that if it is tied into the system then it is going to clear anyway.

 

[Northside Reef]

Assuming you're "ghost feeding" the tank, the best thing to do is challenge the tank with an equivalent feeding, and see how long it takes for the NH3 spike to be processed.

I cycled the entire system (1100+ gallons) by spiking ammonia to 5ppm and watching it drop. I did that a few times to 5ppm the first time it took a few weeks. the last time it took about a day to get nitrates back to 0. I would guess by now there has been some bacteria die off since I am not spiking it anymore and just letting the few hundred snails and thousands of pods and lots of macro maintain the nitrogen cycle.

Your "current tank info" states that your tanks are all "tied together".
If that IS the case, how are you keeping the water in the seahorse tank in the recommended 68° to 74°F range when abouit 3/4 of the system water will be warmer?
I see also a potential for pathogen transfer from other fish in the system, to seahorses that don't do well with pathogens they haven't grown up with.
Regarding temperatures, see post #5 by pledoscophy
I agree with the "challenge the tank" method. I would add enough ammonia to get a reading of 1ppm and see if it clears overnight.
However, I expect that if it is tied into the system then it is going to clear anyway.

I have challenged it several time with Ammonium Chloride to 5ppm. Maybe a bit more my test kit did not go past 5ppm and that first blast may have caused a slight stall it took quite awhile to clear. But it has successfully cycled that amount in about a day. I have 3 100 gallon refugiums full of LR and macro tied into the system.

The return system itself runs at 74 degrees, the seahorse tank has a 1/4 horse chiller on a closed loop (not running currently but can at any time) that lets me drop that temp down in that tank. I tested so far down to 72. but since I am just feeding and growing bugs and macro I don't see a need to run it at that temp until I start getting closer to thinking about adding the seahorses. I heat the water after the return to the 92 and 45 to 75 degrees for the 280. Note: that heated water travels through about 900 gallons without any heaters and cools naturally to 74 before it returns to the seahorse tank. There's a build thread around here somewhere that shows the entire system.

I am concerned about the possibility of pathogens, but there are pluses and minuses to running a system this large. Since this is the route I have decided to take the best plan I have so far is to make sure that the seahorses are the first animals in the system (after the cleanup crew). But when to add them?

My initial plan was to wait several months and let the microfauna population and macro algae density build. hopefully providing a safe environment with abundant food will help to produce healthy animals. With a healthy immune system. So far from what I have read there are healthy mixed systems. I am hoping this will be one of them.

I think maybe a couple of more months? That's the question that I have not quite figured out yet.

 

[rayjay]

Actually, seahorses will quickly decimate the populations of any microfauna that they have any interest in, in very quick order. After that, it will just be a snack here and there for them.
I set up a 65g and let go for about 5 months while I waited for cites and related paperwork to import some seahorses and I fed the tank specifically to boost the populations of mysids, gammarus, amphipods and others.
At the time I put the seahorses in the tank, it had been teeming with these pods. Within a week, it was decimated and the seahorses began to eat the frozen foods I had been adding and they were ignoring.
As for macro, I only have one type, but it grows so fast with the feeding of seahorses, that I have to harvest about every 3 weeks, so I doubt you need to wait another couple of months for that part.

 

[Northside Reef]

Thank You RayJay!

 

[Jonnyhot]

Ok so how hard is it to keep sea horses

 

[gnu]

I don't think it's harder. You just have to read and research a lot before you start. Know which tankmates are safe and quarantine them...and be ready to rehome them if problems arise. I had a lobo that kept stealing surrounding coral and macro, I got nervous that it might nab one of my SH, so now it's in the frag tank.

Setting up a SH tank is sort of like baby-proofing a house, you need to anticipate possible future accidents/injuries and set up accordingly...heater guards, protect powerheads and overflow, etc.

 

[DanU]

FWIW, many larger seahorses ignore copepods. They are simply to small. Kind of like you or I eating rice 1 grain at a time. Amphipods and mysids they will go after readily. Some will take to copepods but you have to watch them carefully because they do not get enough mass out of them for proper nutrition and can slowly starve themselves.

Dan

 

[pledosophy]

Northside, I would love any links you could provide on mixed systems involving seahorses and tanks kept at different temperatures. It would help me out.

IME with pods, my seahorses don't care about them, I waited on them for manderins, but not seahorses. For Amphipods or Mysids I never cared to much because seahorses in the wild can consume up to 3,000 a day, so the difference between waiting a week or 6 months might actually mean two days to your population after the seahorse gets in there. I like refugiums so, they can grow there unaffected by my seahorses.

For Mysids I had a system going for awhile to feed some wild caughts that never took to frozen and help supplement my income a bit. Basically a 1000g or so of water in multiple tubs. I would keep the adults in pool filter baskets covered with a net and light them for 18 hours. They release fry at first dark. The fry go to the top but since the adults eat the fry I kept the adults down with pool netting over the basket. The overflow took the fry to a different tank where they could grow out. The grow out tank had a return pump covered with a micron sleave so it wouldn't suck the fry back up. if the fry got back to the parents they were food.

I had one parent tank and several grow out tanks. Most of the tanks were 20-40g's. Which helped keep small batches growing but ready to feed.

I also grew a lot of macro in this system.

I fed the adults and the fry frozen seafood from the grocery store. Just blended a seafood medley meant for pasta and poured it in.

In the end I found captive bred seahorses to be much easier and far less expensive to feed, and while I did enjoy it for awhile, my life is much easier now. Plus now I have a house, a garden, a wife, no time for the rest of it.

 

[Northside Reef]

If you click on my home page you'll see the link to my build thread. It is really nothing I would recommend anyone trying to duplicate. And I do have a few adjustments to make to it. but a quick overview:

There are three tanks in the fishroom. (280 main, 92 seahorse, 45 clown) all of them return to a main sump. That water from that return sump is pumped to a filtration room (I call it the filtration shed) that is fully insulated and climate controlled.

The water enters the shed through a 100 gallon rubbermaid refugium that grows macroalgae then flows to two more such refugiums. (so 300 gallons in total) from there in flows down to a 325 gallon reservoir. None of this water is heated through any of those tanks and I keep the room at 70 degrees. So the water naturally cools to about 74 f. The water that goes to the seahorse tank comes directly off the 325 gallon reservoir.
The seahorse tank has a 1/4HP chiller recirculating at 72 f. This makes sure there are no temp spikes on that tank. The water the goes back to the 280 leaves the 325 gallon reservoir and goes to a 150 gallon return sump that is heated to 75 f. Again this is just to make sure there are no temperature spikes.

It's very elaborate and excessive probably but it's a hobby