Introducing my dwarf ponies

[deetu]

These little guys are so tiny and a lot of work but are so cute.  There are eight of them but they really blend in well.  They are in 2.5 gallon bare bottom tank. 

Was all set to have sand and real plants only but got talked into making it simpler with additional plastic plants and agreed when they were in quarantine.

[deetu]

I lost my first pony today.  He got stuck under the sponge filter.  I decided to put it to the bottom because it was hard to clean under... I checked to make sure nothing was under before doing but he got under it.  I feel so bad...

[devaji108]

WOW love it. I have always wanted a SH tank might be setting up one soon we will see. dwarfs would be cool to but even harder.

are you hatching BBS everyday? 

can you tell us more about this tank and what you do to care for them plz 😄 

 

[deetu]

Hey Dev,  I had Erectus seahorses about 10 years ago and loved them.  They had such great personalities but my tank was really too small to keep them healthy.  I had a 20 gallon Xtall with a 10 gallon fuge but they are very dirty fish.  I had planned on getting a 56 gallon column with my fuge once we bought a new house but my husband wasn't crazy about that idea...didn't like the salt creep and the skimmer overflowed twice so I agreed on my AIO 20 gallon.

I had gotten the 2.5 gallon tank to move my feather duster so I could worm my main tank... He jumped the tube and didn't make the transfer but I thought the little tank would be great for dwarfs. (secretly had the dwarfs in mind anyway)

Now, after that background...

 

Are they hard to take care of?  Not really hard as much as time consuming. 

 

Do I have to hatch bbs every day?   Yes  I keep extra that I feed and gutload for the adult ponies but understand the babies, once they come, will need the new hatched.  Sometimes I got a bad hatch so I make sure I have other options available... like a container of bbs in the refrigerator.  If I end up with too many, the 20 gallon gets to enjoy.

I am very careful to make sure I rinse the bbs with freshwater and not take a chance of contaminating for hydroids, which sting the ponies and can kill the babies.  Although it was my understanding that decapping killed hydroids, I found that not true and they hatch in higher salinity (was trying to make self feeder and had an outbreak). 

 

I had sand and nassarius snails in the tank originally but was talked into going bare bottom and saw the benefit while they were in QT (They were wild caught) and being wormed. 

I do a partial water change every day, sucking out the poop in the morning.  If I didn't get the red slime from the low flow of the filtration, I might have kept the sand.

In the future I will upgrade to 5 gallon and add stronger filtration so maybe put the sand back then.

 

They are tiny, tiny and hide so you really need to look for them in the tank.  I keep a magnify glass handy. I'm not sure if once you get babies that don't know the wild or buy captive bred, if they will act different. 

 

You cannot put anything else in with them except certain snails, shrimp or dwarf pipefish.

 

Oh, and they only live about a year and half but apparently breed often because of that.

 

I'm getting the hang of it so it has gotten easier but...

Facebook...Dwarf seahorses - Help & Advice

 

 

[icatchsnook]

Nice ponies!  I currently have a bunch of erectus horses in various stages of growth, one is full grown around 7" and then they scale down to younger ones in the 1-2" range.  Love the seahorse tank, super fun to watch and everything in there ecoscaped and collected from Florida.  We had a zostrea for a little while but he was super hard to keep after he pretty much wiped out the copepods that were already in the tank and I had to start seeding.  I have two peppermint shrimp in with the horses along with a cowrie snail, turban snail and astrea snail.  I opted for planting the tank and have halimeda and mermaid fans in there, but it kind of limits the coloration of the horses.  Have a gorgonian coming in soon and hoping that colors them up some.

[deetu]

9 hours ago, icatchsnook said:

Nice ponies!  I currently have a bunch of erectus horses in various stages of growth, one is full grown around 7" and then they scale down to younger ones in the 1-2" range.  Love the seahorse tank, super fun to watch and everything in there ecoscaped and collected from Florida.  We had a zostrea for a little while but he was super hard to keep after he pretty much wiped out the copepods that were already in the tank and I had to start seeding.  I have two peppermint shrimp in with the horses along with a cowrie snail, turban snail and astrea snail.  I opted for planting the tank and have halimeda and mermaid fans in there, but it kind of limits the coloration of the horses.  Have a gorgonian coming in soon and hoping that colors them up some.

I loved my big ponies... my female would dance for me when she was begging for food.

As you can see from my avatar, she would turn pink and burgundy to match my coraline and macro.

[Clown79]

On 11/24/2019 at 9:28 PM, deetu said:

These little guys are so tiny and a lot of work but are so cute.  There are eight of them but they really blend in well.  They are in 2.5 gallon bare bottom tank. 

Was all set to have sand and real plants only but got talked into making it simpler with additional plastic plants and agreed when they were in quarantine.

Omg, they are so beautiful.

 

I really wanted dwarfs but can't find them here anymore.

[squamptonbc]

I love these guys. I used to have a bunch when I was a teenager in the 90s could buy them from ads in back of magazines.

 

I would love to have some again, but as clown79 says they are not available in Canada anymore.