My aquarium project from ground zero

[JustADude]

Good morning RC

It has been in the area of five years since I have been in the reef tank hobby and, I'm very sure things have changed since my days in the hobby....

It has always been my dream to have a Seahorse tank and, I think the time is here for me to pursue and , move forward in establishing my tank. In September I plan on buying a new home so, for now and till then I'll be doing my homework and, prepping the tank.

What I have now in my garage is a 50 gallon Oceanic, my intentions with this empty tank is
to drill it , set up a closed loop system and, an internal overflow( the tank is not reef ready )
I'm thinking I'll have twelve entry points for my closed loop. 5 in the base , 2 on each side and 3 on the back. I'm thinking that should be good enough to insure no dead spots.
I'll be custom building the stand so, my thoughts are to pick up another 50 gallon to use as a sump/refugium. my question here is the return pump ?? I'm not sure what my target gph
should be for my Seahorse tank, I know if its to heigh then I'll be bouncing the sea-horses
around, to low then I'll face algae issues.
So I'm open for recommendation.

My last question of the day is on lighting, its to my understanding that , sea-horses are not found of bright lighting. So on that note I'm thinking of a low light reef tank .
I have mixed emotions on going with NO fluorescent or compact or, even a mix of 96w compacts coupled with NO actinic.


Thanks in advance for any and all input ...
Have a good day

 

[rayjay]

If this is to be a reef tank, it's best to have non stinging corals that are not light demanding and can be kept in 74°F or lower temperatures.
Seahorses are magnets for bacterial problems especially vibrio and the higher the temperature the more likely it is to occur.
As for flow, you would be surprised at how much flow they like/don't like.
Some deliberately search out a high flow and perch in it; it's like us scratching our backs on the corner of the doorway.
If you have a variety of water motion areas, then they will seek out just what they want if you have hitching available in all these areas.
Search out a supply of genuine tank raised captive bred seahorses, as Seahorse Source in the U.S. grows.
Net pen raised are many times called captive bred but while they feed on frozen mysis, they are still fraught will all the pathogens the wild caught ones have.

 

[JustADude]

Thank you very much for the informative reply...
As I said I have time to plan. I'll dig in and start doing some research on the corals.
My plan is to have the tank fully established and stable before I even fathom introducing
the sea-horses, I need to fully understand and know their environmental demands.