starting a seahorse tank?

i think somethings killing my snails :\. I haven't seen ANY (i have 5) of my nassarius snails for about a week, and two of my astrea snails i think are dead, i found them flipped over one day on the sand so i turned them over and they were back flipped over the next day. As far as i can tell the hermit crabs aren't going after them, i cant imagine the shrimp would do any damage. Parameters haven't changed
ammonia-0
nitrite-0
nitrate- <20
 
fishymann, it's nice to see how everything has come along and love the pics. My wife and I are probably going to start a SH tank and we're trying to figure out which tank to use and everything esle that goes along with it. I was originally thinking of going the nano route using a chiller to keep the hear down, but now I'm leaning towards a 55 gal tank that I'm not using. For lighting I've got a PC setup but I'm not sure what I'm going to do for filtration. For the skimmer I'm thinking about the new Bermuda Rogue Wave skimmer that just came out.

I had a reef tank in the past, but I'm curious in how upkeep might compare to keeping SH. Would you mind passing on what a typical maintenace schedule is for you?
 
Not a problem; i top off the sump as needed (usually once a day). Every saturday i change about 10 gallons of water, clean the filter sock and thats about it. I scrape the glass as needed. I could probably get away with every other week but just makes sense to do it weekly.
 
I don't plan on running a sump for this tank, but I do plan on using a skimmer so I'm wondering if I can get away with less water changes or should I still plan on a weekly change.
 
you'll have to see, water changes all depend on the personal tank, how much you feed, what the bioload is, how much rock you have.. so on and so forth. Some easy testing will show you what you need.
 
I went with a 30g Oceanic cube instead of the 16g acrylic, so weekly water changes here I come. I'm sure you may have seen this, but incase you have not check out the nanoplanner from Current USA. It's a free program that anyone can use and it's not only for nanos. Basically it's a reminder program for all the various tasks an aquarium owner needs to do. Check it out if you haven't already.
 
yea i had that pretty useless in my eyes. i know when i have to do maintence and stuff, itd work better for larger tanks when you have to do things more routined and a lot more things then just a few water changes now and then
 
Yeah, I kept hearing smaller tank bigger problems. Now that I have the 30 on the stand sitting in my living room, I think I made the right choice. I won't pickup the rest of the equip until this w/end; the anticipation is killing me.
 
newest batch of pictures

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Those are some good pics fishymann. I have been following your thread and I was wondering how things turned out after you had to rip out the rock to find your female. Does she stil hide like that ? And is that a picture of your 2g pico reef? What do you have in that?

Brewce
 
I need some advice my fellow seahorse keepers! My rock is getting to much ditrite build up. The flow from the return isnt enough to have full water current. I know i need to keep the current slow enough for the horses but i need it enough to keep everything from settling

Right now i have a maxijet 400 pointed at the surface of the water just to break up the stagnant water, it works but is not powerfull enough at all to do what i need to do for the rest of the tank.

So how do you think this would work, 2 maxijet 600 (or 900 which one?) One on each side (left and right), left up towards the upper strata and on the right down towards the lower strata?

Basically which would provide enough current but not to much?
 
Do a water change and suck it out, or use your cannister as a vacuum.

If your going the powerhead route, I think you should look at the Seio's first since the flow is more broken up.

If the detritus is building up in the rocks maybe a MJ1200 attached to a spraybar under the rocks would give you more flow, and break up the detritus.

The only way I have been able to keep my rocks clean and seahorse tanks algae free is by using spraybars under the rock work.

JME HTH
 
alright thanks, i have been sucking it out and am leaving the lights off for a few days, but it usually comes on back. Maybe i'll work out some spraybar with a mj900 since i hear the 1200s put out an extreme amount of heat. Thanks pledo
 
I didn't read all 14 pages so this may have been suggested already but you could modify your plumbing to add a spraybar all across the bottom back of the tank and increase the size of your pump to get more flow.

I'm running a Quiet One 3000 through a chiller and the flow seems to be fine, no dead spots and I could possibly even go larger but I'll wait for the horses and see how they react. My spraybar goes down the right side with 3 holes angled diagonally to hit the side glass, then across the back with holes aimed at the rock work and diagonally up the back glass, then around the corner for about 6". This creates good movement with no dead spots and no jet streams.

Also, did you ever get rid of those brass fittings?
 
The reason you are having "scum" on the surface of the water is because you don't have a overflow which would pull water from the top getting rid of the scum. A more powerfull PH aimed at the top breaking up the water tension would help simply by mixing the scum back into the water. In the past when I've had a drilled tank without an overflow I simply used a PVC elbow with the opening at the water surface, it acts like asmall overflow. You could try to mod your plumbing by cutting your intake pipe and adding an elbow. If it doesn't work just get a joiner and reinstall your original pipe, you wouldn't even need glue as its underwater anyway. if you try the elbow be sure to get a joiner to go from your size PVC to at least a size or 2 up to a bigger elbow.

As for the build up on/ between your rocks just buy a simple turkey baster from wal mart or the supermarket and "blow" your rocks. I have a 900g seaswirl return and 2 tunze pumps in my 75g and I blow my rocks daily and you wouldn't believe all the stuff that gets stirred up daily when I do it.The reason is simple, no amount of flow can get everywhere in a tank, there is always a crevice or spot where one rock shades another and thats where things will settle. A 2$ turkey baster will take care of it without adding heat to the tank or ugly PH's .

One last thing, if you try the elbow, be sure to cover it with a piece of plastic gutter guard from Home Depo so the Sh's don't take an eventfull trip to the sump. do you have a sponge or something covering your intake now?
 
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