My Dwarfs are vanishing!!

[PJsStuff]

Why are my dwarfs vanishing? I had 15 of them and now im down to 10! There are also no bodies in the tank that i can find. I just went through the tank and took everything out and counted them and could only find 10 The tank is a 10gal inwall tank thats connected to my main reef, only about 200gal sump now but a 500+gal tank coming next year. There are no hydroids or anemas in the seahorse tank. all i have in the tnak is some sand and some alage (grape looking stuff and some red stuff) and two Gorgonia things for them to hitch on. I also have some 4 turbo snails and one pep shrim. Where are they going?? they seam happy. I feed them live baby brine twice a day. Thanks for any help.

 

[CCall]

Are you sure that they aren't in the sump or other tank?
My guess is that if they died the turbo snails did their job and ate the bodies.
Everyone recommends not to plumb the dwarf tank with a reef tank. Just to risky and temperature problem.

 

[PJsStuff]

no there not in the other tank unless the figured out how to jump or get through the sponge covering the overflow. Are there any other seahorses that are bigger that i can keep in a 10gal tank?

 

[panmanmatt]

My guess is that the peppermint is getting them.

And, no, there are no other species for a 10 gallon tank.

 

[PJsStuff]

i took the pep out tonight. hopefully that helps.

 

[PJsStuff]

saw one die tonight. he was just swiming around and fell to the bottom. not sure whats going on. Any ideas?

 

[ReefNutPA]

It's hard to say what's going on, PJ. There could be any number of things going on. First of all, it is VERY unwise to have a dwarf seahorse tank plumbed into a reef tank. Despite the fact you didn't see any hydroids doesn't mean they aren't there.

Besides that issue, there are so many other things that could be happening I couldn't even begin to offer suggestions without more information.

Keeping dwarfs is in many ways much more challenging than keeping larger seahorses. Lots can go wrong.

Tom

 

[PJsStuff]

iv had them hooked into the reef for over a year now. How long do these little guys live? are they just getting old??

 

[TamiW]

That could be it. I've head about 18 - 24 mo for lifespan, and if they were adults when you got them, they could be that old.

 

[PJsStuff]

Poor little guys :sad1: