Seahorse tankmates?

smokinreefer

Premium Member
Hello,

I'm considering putting together a seahorse tank, and am curious about possible tankmates.

Please let me know if any of these would or wouldn't be good tank mates and why.

Garden eels
Mandarin gobies
Bangaii cardinals
Yellow headed jawfish

My thinking is these fish are all slow going, like low flow, and are not aggressive.

Thanks!
 
First of all, every fish addition decreases the chances of a successful keeping of seahorses.
Seahorses for some reason, are very susceptible to pathogens they haven't been exposed to when rearing.
As most fish you add to the tank don't come from the same source, they are being exposed possibly to new pathogens each time you add a fish.
Next, seahorses don't LIKE low flow but rather enjoy having low medium and even high flow areas as long as there are hitches for them in each area so they can choose which area when they want. Some even play in the output flow of power heads. Main thing is that there is no place where flow can direct them against an object so they can be injured.
At the bottom of http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/seahorsekeeping.html there are a bunch of links helpful to someone starting seahorse keeping and one of the links is to the "org's" Tankmates Guide.
If you do want to have fish other than seahorses in the tank then the guide can be helpful to you. There are multiple reasons for the ratings on each of the fish, but zero is obviously the best and one rating can be chancy.
It's also best that you keep the seahorses only for the first year or so, making it easier to diagnose reasons for problems that develop.
It's important to note that following all the recommendations won't guarantee success in the seahorse keeping hobby, and indeed, there are successes out there that completely ignore some or all of the advice, but the odds are much more favorable when abiding by them.
 
thank you for the "intro" to seahorses!

i see i have a fair bit or reading to do!

well the good thing is, even if i do set up this tank, it is not gonna be done anytime soon. so i can do more reading and decide if its something i will follow through with or not.

thanks again.
 
I applaud you for taking the time to learn about them.
So many just go ahead and then ask afterwards.
 
Learner

Learner

Thanks for the post, i had seahorses and it went well. I gave my thank away because i was moving away to a new city. This time i'm doing a 75G refugium with seahorses and i'm reading all i can on them. They'll be alone in it and with a collection of macro-algae for a descent environment. I did notice the last time the fun they had doing sumersaults in the bubble stone i had put in the tank and holding tails really enjoyed their frisky ways. I'm certainly going to put a few of these stones this time they enjoyed them too much, lol. :beer:
 
Large bubbles from open ended air lines are best and provide more surface agitation with far less salt creep.
 
high flow experience

high flow experience

The only sea horses I had were what I considered rescued from a place that weren't eating. I had a 300 gallon sump for my 600 gallons tank. the sump was full of macro. The pump was flowing appx 40 gallons/minute. I made sure I had no bubble except in a contained corner. The horses did extremely well in those circumstances. I had them for years. Who knows how long they would have lived if it weren't for the catastrophe that happened.
 
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