My new 36 gallon seahorse tank

L

LCP136

New member
Hi everyone,

I am new here at RC, but I've been in the hobby for a few years starting with freshwater 3 years ago. My 90 gallon reef turned 1 year old in July. Monday I converted my 36 gallon freshwater into a tank destined to be a seahorse tank. It has 40 lbs live sand, 20 lbs fully cured live rock, and an eheim 220 canister filter. For hitching there are a bunch of plastic plants that I will phase out as the macro samples I have in there grow. 3 peppermint shrimp have lived in there since monday, 3 nassarius, 3 astreas, and 2 scarlet hermits have been in there since wednesday. The tank is actually already fully cycled due to the rock, sand, Bio-Spira, and stability. Like I said there are some macros in there that I added today, caulerpa prolifera, and chaeto. Both are pretty rich in pods. This week when the LFS gets in more tigger pods I will add them. Once pods are all over the tank I will add seahorses. I have researched for almost a year and finally am making my tank. Input from experienced seahorse keepers will be much appreciated. I have a couple questions at the moment

#1. H. erectus or H. fuscus. I'd rather have fuscus because I can have more eventually but erectus are supposedly easier. Are they much easier?
#2. How quickly will pods reproduce?
#3. Since H. fuscus are small should I start with a pair or a trio

I will order from seahorse source
 
Tiger pods will not reproduce in your tank unless you have a chiller on there keeping the water at 68-70 degrees all the time. They are cold water copepods. You would be better off ordering in some other varieties from some place like livecopepods.com.

I have a separate tank I keep my pods in. I have learned that they grow like crazy in those sponges that are meant to be in aqua clear filters. They have a pretty short life span of around 3 weeks. It only takes them a week to become large enough to start laying eggs. So they will reproduce fairly quick. But once you have horses in your tank, they will snack on them until you have no more. The only way you can provide ample food on a regular basis is to have another whole set up. I use the sponges to transfer the pods from one tank to another. I just dip the sponge into the receiving tank and squeeze gently a few times while dunking it in and out of the water. I then throw them back onto the other tank, feed that tank, change a very small amount of water and that's it.

I have not kept H. Fuscus. I do have southern erectus. I love my horses. I keep more than I should and do small daily water changes. I feed my horses live brine and frozen mysis. I also collect nice sized amphipods from my copepod/amphipod tank. I pick them off the filter of that tank and only rarely change the filter media because the pods are so happy to live in that dirty media.

I sometimes feed so much live that I seriously lower my pod #'s. When that happens I have to stop collecting for a few weeks. You would be so surprised at how fast the numbers bounce back!

Suzi
 
Well I have a culture going anyway for amphipods so I'll just add copepods. I put an algae scrubber with a sponge in there so all I'll have to do is take it out of the bucket and shake it off in the tank to add a bunch of pods.
 
Thanks for the info. What kind of pods would you expect to be on macros? Would it be tisbes or could it be anything?
 
Definitely some Tisbe, but could be anything. I really like the products from livecopepods.com.

Adelaide also has another site where she sells larger batches for like 75 dollars for people wanting to start cultures.

Suzi
 
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that your tank is fully cured. I understand that your rock is cured. You believe that there will be limited death off the rock when it goes into the tank, and it harboring a certain amount of the necessary ammonia to nitrite to nitrate bacteria. But before you put any horses into that tank, the population of that bacteria has to be able to handle the amount of ammonia that the horses will bring to the tank. So unless you are generously feeding the tank -- over several weeks adding the amount of food that you will eventually feed your seahorses daily -- then your tank isn't cycled for your seahorses.
 
I never worried about these complicated discussions of cycling. It works just as well to test for ammonia daily and do daily water changes. Over time, those changes become smaller and as long as there is no ammonia, the tanks bio-filter will build up over time. It works like a charm. The only time I've gotten ammonia readings in my tanks is when my filters went bad in my typhoon water filter machine and once before I bought that when my LFS sold me bad water.

Suzi
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15466604#post15466604 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Elysia
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that your tank is fully cured. I understand that your rock is cured. You believe that there will be limited death off the rock when it goes into the tank, and it harboring a certain amount of the necessary ammonia to nitrite to nitrate bacteria. But before you put any horses into that tank, the population of that bacteria has to be able to handle the amount of ammonia that the horses will bring to the tank. So unless you are generously feeding the tank -- over several weeks adding the amount of food that you will eventually feed your seahorses daily -- then your tank isn't cycled for your seahorses.
Click to expand...

For the last week plus I have been feeding the tank 2 cubes of mysis/brine daily with no increased ammonia/nitrites. I don't know but I believe thats probably more than my 3 small horses will have at the beginning. I have tested daily and read no ammonia/nitrite except for in the first two days from a mini cycle when ammonia and nitrite rose from 0 to .5 then back down to zero.
 
If you have been feeding two cubes a day for a week and have no detectable ammonia or nitrite, I would say the nitrogen cycle is complete.

Adding the clean-up crew and macro algae is the next step I would have taken as well. Since I am a macro algae kind of guy, I would add more then just prolifera and cheato ;). But those two are nice. Sargassum is also very nice and grows quickly, horses like to hitch on it as well. Halymenia is another good and colorful choice to add some red in the tank. Halmedia is an interesting texture. Red grape is really fun . . . Ya I'm a pusher. Personally I would stay away from other fast growing species like prolifera for now unless you want to be constantly pruining. Keep the prolifera, but if you want a variety having to man fast growing species of macro can be problamatic IME.

There is no real way to know what pods came in on your macro. For the most part it doesn't really matter. There are a few exceptions but in a display a pod is pretty much a pod.

I have not gone to the trouble of adding pods to a tank for many years. IME they show up on there own. Jut be patient and wait for them. Also IME it is possibl to keep healthy populations of pods going while there is a seahorse or pipefish in the system. I use piles of "rubble rock" which is just basically smashed up live rock. The pods just need an area to breed in where the seahorse can not get to. Refugiums are also good for this.

Worst case there will be no pods in the system, but since your getting CB seahorses that will be trained on frozen mysis, that is not really a bad scenario at all. The mysis will be there diet, the pods can be snacks, but they don't need them, and IME some seahorses don't even bother hunting them IME. Species like tisbe are really most helpful with fry IME, but even then a luxury, not a necessity.

JMO
 
THanks for the info. I believe I will be keeping southern erectus, a seahorse that most people say is bigger than will hunt for pods anyway.

I talked to seahorse source earlier today and they gave me the okay to add horses. I would like H. fuscus, but they are not readily available. We need to talk again, so I will be keeping either fuscus or erectus.
 
The two things about fuscus that make fuscus tempting are the fact that you can have one more pair than erectus in my tank and that I've heard that they are more personable and fun to watch.
 
Me too. Seahorse source said that I could start with 4 but I'm ordering 3 for now. Apparently they have some erectus with cirri which sort of sealed the deal for me on erectus.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15470148#post15470148 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by LCP136
For the last week plus I have been feeding the tank 2 cubes of mysis/brine daily with no increased ammonia/nitrites. I don't know but I believe thats probably more than my 3 small horses will have at the beginning. I have tested daily and read no ammonia/nitrite except for in the first two days from a mini cycle when ammonia and nitrite rose from 0 to .5 then back down to zero.
Click to expand...

Just wanted to make sure! I've lost a pair of horses before (to ant poison), and it is heartbreaking. Congrats on your horse order, and post pics once they are settled in.
 
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