Newbie questions...

[Texex94]

Hi everyone. I've had some limited experience with "trying" to keep a nanoreef and definitely think my idea of a nanoreef was too small, so it was destined for failure. I was able to get mushrooms and polyps to thrive, but due to the limited size of the tank, I wasn't always able to keep up on top-offs, dosing, water changes, etc. I also didn't run a skimmer, which I think ultimately lead to my tank not being near as vibrant as I've seen with some of the tanks on the forum.

I'm in the learning stages at this point and want to put together a dwarf seahorse or pipefish tank that my kids and I could enjoy. So, I'll be scouring the boards to learn, but wanted to get some ideas from people who have been successful on how you would set up a tank.

1) What sized tank would be recommended - all in one or customized

2) Types of coral

3) Filtration - i.e. refugium? skimmer? flow? etc...

My goal is to get the tank set up, cycled, and stabilized with coral and other livestock before introduction of the seahorses. I'd like to have the tank stabilized a minimum of 3-4 months and running well before I add the horses. I want to keep their stress minimized.

So, shoot away! I'm looking forward to learning from the best!

Texex94

 

[rayjay]

Well I can't advise on pipefish keeping other than normally it's not recommended to mix seahorses and pipefish unless you can get true captive bred pipefish. Also, most pipefish will need a larger tank than dwarfs.
Dwarf seahorses are best kept in a species only tank that starts with all sterile contents.
As dwarfs need constant feeding of live enriched brine shrimp nauplii, adding other contents that are NOT sterilized first can lead to the nasty hydroids that can negatively affect the dwarfs.
For dwarfs, a small tank in the range of 2.5 to 5g would normally be used. I've maintained up to 50 in a 5g.
It needs to be small because to get the needed feeding density of brine shrimp anything larger would take prohibitive amounts of live enriched brine shrimp. (best also to remove any remaining live brine before the next feeding because their nutrition level would have been depleted by then)
The high density is required because while you may get some dwarfs that will hunt the live brine, most will stay hitched, waiting for the live food to come by close enough to be snicked up without leaving the hitch.
Temperature recommendation is 68° to 74°F which in turn would also limit what corals you could put in if you were to.
My dwarf tanks were just plain tanks, bare bottom with open ended air lines for water movement and gas exchange. I used live rock for the biological filter. Many dwarf keepers use the air powered sponges in their tanks.
All my hitching is artificial.
I personally don't use a skimmer on dwarf tanks because they are so small and large frequent water changes coupled with vacuuming after wiping down the surfaces in the water work so well.
Before you actually decide to go dwarfs, I'd recommend starting out with decapping, hatching and enriching live brine shrimp so see the workload involved in keeping dwarfs. I'm guessing it's the singlemost thing that keepers drop out of the dwarf hobby for as it gets to be such a PITA after a while.
While I've been keeping regular seahorses now for about 12 years, I didn't quite make it to two years with dwarfs before I quit them. (and yet I hatch and enrich all the time when I'm raising seahorse fry)

 

[Texex94]

Wow! Awesome information Rayray. Definitely makes me rethink the dwarf seahorses and lean toward the smaller seahorses. I didn't realize by dwarf, they would be SO tiny. Very cute, but I can see how having the hatch baby brine and enrich them can become a major hassle.

For the seahorses, I was thinking of locating a Biocube 29 and modifying it to suit seahorses. Do commercially hatched seahorses take frozen foods a bit better? I've always heard that seahorses require live foods, which has been somewhat of a deterrent for making the jump.

 

[rayjay]

I've never had one myself by the plugn'play like the bio cubes have been reported as keeping the tank temperatures too high. I don't know if that is still the case or not.
I've always just used regular tanks for all my seahorse tanks and all my reef tanks as well.
I don't know what you consider the "smaller" seahorses to be, but ones smaller than standard to the industry are pretty hard to come by these days. I think Ocean Rider had a couple of smaller ones but not always in stock. (very expensive)
29g is considered the MINIMUM for ONE PAIR of standard seahorses like comes, reidi, erectus... and an additional 15g needed for each ADDITIONAL PAIR.
That is without any other fish considered.
My Thoughts on Seahorse Keeping