wild caught baby seahorse??

[oxkisses12ox]

my local aquarium knows me pretty well and they have a baby seahorse that is only 1/2 inch tall and they want to give it to me... i really want it ! but i am worried i do not have the correct tank for it. I would have a tank with a bubble coral, plate coral , coral beauty angel, percula clown, lawnmower blenny, hermits, pencil urchin, red starfish, cleaner shrimp.

NOT IN MY 14 gallon! Haha

but i was wondering ( since i have low flow ) and i would keep some hitching posts and a feeding station out of a nicve shiny shell ( i think it is an oyster shell ) but i would make sure my seahorse ate and other than that would it be okay to get one?

 

[ann83]

Not in that aquarium with those tankmates. And if this is going to be your first seahorse, I'd wait and get a captive bred seahorse that is 3"-4". A half inch wild caught seahorse would be difficult in even the best setup with an experienced keeper. And a feeding station isn't going to do you a lot of good since I doubt the SH is eating frozen food. Do you know what species the seahorse is... I have a feeling its not even a large species of seahorse and is in fact a dwarf SH, those never grow larger than an inch or so, and need their own small species only setup with you hatching out baby brine shrimp daily.

 

[oxkisses12ox]

well, it is black... and i would be feeding it brineshrimp daily, as well as some copeods if it ate them. Why cant seahorses be in a tank set up with those fish? is it becuase of it being a slow eater? or will the other fish harm it?

 

[ann83]

Those tankmates would potentially be too aggressive and outcompete for food with a large seahorse, but they are definately life threatening for a seahorse as small as the one you are describing. They will eat it. The color of the seahorse does nothing to help identify the species of seahorse since seahorses can change color. Look around the gallery at seahorse.org http://gallery.seahorse.org/main.php and see if you can identify your seahorse. If it was wild caught in florida, it is most likely either a dwarf seahorse (hippocampus zostrae) or a southern erectus seahorse (hippocampus erectus). A seahorse that small doesn't just need brine shrimp, it needs newly hatched baby brine shrimp, so be aware that you will be constantly hatching baby brine shrimp. Wild caught seahorses also need to be treated on purchase, as they come in with more bacteria and parasites than captive bred, so they are more fragile. Here is an article on caring for dwarf seahorses http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/dwarfKeeping.shtml, and here is discussion thread on the special needs of wild caught seahorses http://forum.seahorse.org/index.php?showtopic=5946. Also, here is an article on appropriate tankmates for large species of seahorses, however be aware that anything ranked higher than zero poses a danger to baby seahorses and no fish are appropriate tankmates for dwarf seahorses. http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/tankmates.shtml
Lastly, seahorses drag their tails along the sand, rock, and anything else in the tank, and will also try to hitch to pretty much anything in the tank, making your aquarium very dangerous for them as you have stinging corals, especially the plate coral, that could easily kill this seahorse.
If the seahorse in question is hippocampus zosterae, it could be kept in a very small aquarium (2 to 5 gallons), provided it had no other tankmates and received the proper care.
When people talk about seahorses, they are talking about adults of the larger species of seahorses (4"- 8" or more), and a seahorse that is only 1/2" in length would require special care as either a dwarf seahorse or a baby seahorse in a dedicated rearing system.

 

[cmb88]

umm o was just looking around..straying from nano lol and i have a question..
i always thought sea horses were too fragile to keep etc and not to get wild ones or they die..? any info to enlighten me would be great.. are they terribly difficult to keep?

 

[cmsargent]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9679983#post9679983 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cmb88
umm o was just looking around..straying from nano lol and i have a question..
i always thought sea horses were too fragile to keep etc and not to get wild ones or they die..? any info to enlighten me would be great.. are they terribly difficult to keep?

Well seahorse are to fragile to keep in a typical reef aquarium. However they can be kept in dedicated species tanks if you set it up with the seahorses needs in mind (i.e no stinging corals, no aggressive fish, no aggressive eaters or fast swimming fish, cooler temps, etc.).

Wildcaught seahorse can survive in the aquarium but they need more care and attention than a captive breed seahorse. For example WC seahorse won't recognize frozen as food so you have to be able to provide live food (and brine isn't a good food choice over the long term). It may be possible to train them onto frozen but that will take time and effort. There is always the possibility that the wild horse will never learn to eat frozen.

Then there are issues with disease and patogens. WC horses are much more likely to be carring worms, nematodes, flukes, etc. This means to keep them healthy they should be treated with dewormers and other antiparasitic meds. Again not impossible but it means more work for the keeper, a longer QT, and the possibility of the seahorse not surviving the treatment. There is also the concern of thier carrying harmfull bacteria so the keeper needs to be prepared to treat infections if they occur.

So basically while WC seahorse can be kept its not easy and requires a lot of time and effort for the owners with a larger chance of failure. Captive bread seahorse are much easier and can do quite well if they have the proper tank environment.

 

[pledosophy]

I've kept WC's for up to 5.5 years for one horse. IME the only difference between WC's and CB's was about $6,000 a year for food, per horse.

I got lucky, never had a parasite problem, but some species are more prone to that then others.