discus513's 5.1g Ecoxotic Dwarf Seahorse Pico

[discus513]

Okay I am making the jump! I have had this little tank running for weeks to get the cycle over, and I have ordered my Dwarfs from SaltCritters (usa) they will probably be here sometime this week, the tank comes with a small internal power filter, so I plan to wrap the intank with a sponge, this is a pretty week filter anyways, so Im sure that will slow it down even more, I plan to run a phosphate sponge and maybe some carbon in the filter (I am using only the sponge right now. Do you guys think I should run one of those double sponge filters on the back wall of the tank? For lighting I am using three led strips on the factory light which is pretty week but there is no heat on them, the ballast is in the plug so It is 4ft away rom the tank. Right now I have some rock that was dry rock when I started (I piece of tonga, and two small pieces of figi) I also have two old coral skeletons that I rinsed off with very hot water before I stuck them in the tank. Should I start my brine shrimp hatchery before the ponys get here? Also When I ordered the ponys I ordered decapped brine shrimp, I have brine shrimp eggs in the basement from when I used to raise them for freshwater discus but it wasn't decapped, so I was worried about starting off on a bad foot. Okay guys this is the part where I get drilled, after reading for several weeks I still haven't figured out for sure all the do's and don't with these little guys, I am getting 2 pairs (2 males, 2 females) I am a reef guy (3 reef tanks) When I first started thinking about these guys I wanted to do a macro and coral mixed tank with the dwarfs. Has anyone ever kept Ricordia, Yuma, Zoa's or discomias with dwarfs? The only tall stuff would maybe be a gorgonian or two. What do I need to do to the coral before it goes in the tank to make sure it doesn't have anything nasty on it (hydro,aptasia,etc). I have read a couple things about salinity I have read anywhere from 1.017-1.023. I do know that the vendor told me he keeps his tanks at 1.022, so I planed to try to keep it as close as possible, also my temp has been staying at 75 degrees F constant, and this is with no heater or chiller. this should be fine right? any advise is appreciated, Im not a rookie by any means with fish, both freshwater and saltwater, but with seahorses Im a rookie, so don't beat me up too bad! LOL

[21093r53]

Any sort of mushroom could sting them. Check out what others are doing and research these guys to minimize your losses

[Felicia]

4 dwarf seahorses in a 5.1 gallon tank are going to be too few. They're tiny little things and if you have too few, it makes feeding difficult. They are passive eaters and will just eat food as it floats by them, so you have to add enough food to the tank to get a density where they will have enough food float by them. If you only have a couple dwarf seahorses, you will end up having a ton of leftover food if you feed enough to get enough food floating around in the water column. You'll want more dwarves to eat more of the food so that you aren't just polluting the water. From "The Complete Guide to Dwarf Seahorses in the Aquarium" by Alisa Wagner Abbott, the minimum number of adult dwarf seahorses for a 5 gallon tank is 8-10. From that book, "A few extra pairs of hungry seahorses help to offset the greater amount of brine shrimp you will be adding to maintain an adequate feeding density in a tank of this size."

 

You really should have baby brine shrimp ready to go when the dwarves arrive since they need to eat every single day and they will have missed out on eating during shipping. You should definitely not use non-decapsulated brine eggs because you can introduce hydroids and other harmful pests on the shells of the eggs. However, if you have non-decapsulated eggs on hand, you could always try decapping them in preparation of the arrival of the seahorses. There are plenty of websites that explain the process for decaping the eggs.

 

Any live rock, coral, macro algae, etc. that you add to the tank will probably have hydroids. Hydroids have a powerful enough sting to seriously harm or kill dwarf seahorses and they can quickly take over a small tank if you introduce them. Hydroids are a pretty common reason that people will lose and entire tank full of dwarf seahorses. One way to prevent introducing hydroids is to dip anything that may have them in a fenbendazole (Panacur) solution before adding them to the tank. Fenbendazole kills hydroids and can be purchased from Seahorse Source.

 

Dwarf seahorses are so tiny that any coral that can sting is going to seriously injure them. Also any coral that can ingest food like mysis shrimp could pose a serious threat to tiny dwarf seahorses. Macro algaes are generally the safest with dwarf seahorses and then the photosynthetic gorgonians are also safe and make good hitching posts. I would do a lot of research before adding any other corals.

Also, it sounds like you have a lot more research to do before you are ready for the seahorses. I think you may have jumped the gun a bit by ordering them already. Please read as much as you can before they arrive. There are a lot of good sources on the internet and the book "The Complete Guide to Dwarf Seahorses in the Aquarium" by Alisa Wagner Abbott is a great overview of almost everything you need to know.

[Felicia]

Here are a couple of good online sources for dwarf seahorse info:

 

http://www.worldofseahorses.com/dwarf%20basics.htm

 

http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/dwarfguide/dwarfguide.shtml

 

http://www.fusedjaw.com/aquariumcare/dwarf-seahorses-as-pets/

[discus513]

Any sort of mushroom could sting them. Check out what others are doing and research these guys to minimize your losses

That's why I am asking the questions.LOL Nothing is set in stone yet, that is what my original picture was but the more I read and ask questions, my plans will change. Thanks!

[discus513]

flsvedlund Thank you for the info and the sites, I am on Seahorse.org also but no one has wrote back on my post last time I was there (24hrs after the post put up), that is why I decided to post this on Nano Reef. Right now my setup has a few pieces of Dry Rock, and some dead birdsnest that has been dried out for about a year. I do have one question though now, everything I read says to start with dry rock because it wont have hitchhikers because it is dry, but brine shrimp eggs are dry, how do hydroids make it in on there shell? I went ahead and took your advise and decapsulated my own brine shrimp, I hope I didn't leave them in the bleach too long and kill the artemia, they were nice and orange when I stuck them in the hatcher, but the bottle I was using to decapsulate them had a green tint so it was hard to tell exactly when they turned orange, I put them on at 11:30a this morning, so I will check them when I get home from work about 8am. I have heard you can enrich with selcom, has anyone ever done this? about what hour should I put in the selcom? I thought about if there is a bunch of them alive in the morning going ahead and adding in a few drops of selcom to start the enrichment process. I do just put the drops right in the hatcher right? Well I hope I didn't jump the gun too much, my 4 ponys should be here tomorrow, my thought was if they breed as quickly as they say I would have a tank full in no time, I also thought about picking up a few ponys from another place to mix up the batch so they are not inbred to badly. I plan to do a drip acclimation 30min-1hr when they get here, any other pointers? thanks!

[discus513]

well the New Ponys have arrived today! they were packed very well and were swimming in the bag as soon as I uncovered them, Here is some pictures of my setup. Let me know what you think, I also talked to my LFS about ordering me some more Dwarfs to help clean up extra food, along with a few sexy Shrimp and a Mysid Shrimp colony. I took the hermit out of the tank and added in a few Hawaiian Strombus Snails and a couple Astraea snails. well I know threads Suck without pictures so here you go!

 

 

[discus513]

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[Felicia]

Cute little things! I'm glad to see they arrived safe and sound and that they are doing well.

 

Did your batch of brine hatch? I think decapsulating the brine can be a bit of an art. The hatch water is usually very dirty, so my recommendation would be to have a second container with clean water that you move the freshly hatched brine to. You can then add the enrichment to that container and give the baby brine time to eat the enrichment. In the meantime, you can clean out the previous container and start the next batch. If you stagger the hatches, then you will have young enough baby brine shrimp available every day, which you need for the dwarves. Selcon should work as an enrichment. Dan's feed in another enrichment that is highly recommended for seahorses. You can purchase it from Seahorse Source.

 

Oh, and honestly I'm not sure how stuff survives on the brine eggs, but everything I read said you have to use decapsulated brine with dwarves. I can try to find a source with a good explanation.

[discus513]

This batch turned out good,I got some bbs in there this morning and started to enrich some as well.I'm getting ready to start a fresh batch also.I actually separated some of the brine and enriched half with selcon and half with phytoplankton.with only having 4 dwarfs in there I plan to do a water change every couple of days to help my tank parameters,I am also thinking of adding a sponge filter to the tank for better oxygen and also to help filter detritus.I have one in my qt that had never had any medicine in it I thought about using, maybe after a long freshwater dip or I may just but a new one, what is your opinion on this? Thanks for the help I know there are more seahorse people out there, anyone else have dwarfs?

[reefernanoman]

Nice! Now I have seen it all; sea horses in a pico.

[discus513]

Nice! Now I have seen it all; sea horses in a pico.

Thanks! Yeah these horses are great for Pico's they actually say anything bigger that a 10g is too big. I just hope I can sustain them and hopefully someday breed them.

 

Well just an update, all 4 Ponys seem to be doing fine, and I think I am going to pick up few more to help eat up some extra food in the tank, maybe another pair or 2 more females and another male. I have been using the decapsulated brine shrimp eggs I picked up from Salt Critters and it has been hatching just fine so they have been eating good, a batch of brine about a 1/2 tsp lasts about a day I put in about half after about 18-20hrs in the hatcher and then I add in some Phyto and selcom and leave it in the hatcher for another 12hrs or so basically gut loading them, or atleast I think this is how it goes, right???? I also added a homemade small sponge filter to the tank, I took an old sponge filter and shortened it and took the inside of an extra sponge filter I bought for a bigger filter and made a hole in it to fit around my tube, I will try to get pictures up soon of it, but I have seen that this serves two purposes, first off it obviously helps with Oxygen and filtration but it also helps break up the brine shrimp at the top of the water column to get down to the horses so they can get them, before this I would notice groups of brine staying at the top of the water line, not anymore.lol

[gogo]

oh man, i wish i could get dwarf seahorses here in canada...

[discus513]

oh man, i wish i could get dwarf seahorses here in canada...

I think they are hard to come by but I am pretty sure you could find them if you wanted, Ray jay on Seahorse.org is from Canada and he had Drawfs for several years, they may be more pricey but I think you can find them, it's crazy that in the US you can get them pretty cheap but outside the US I have seen the prices go way up, over in the UK they used to be like gold and if you found them you pretty much had to sell your soul to get them.lol

[discus513]

Here is a picture of the sponge filter I made, It is nice because it sits behind my rocks and you can barely see it, I had to pull it up to get a picture of it.

 

http://s1214.photobucket.com/user/ricky462/media/IMG_0057_zps66b2e2ba.jpg.html'>

[discus513]

Update: I post a week or so ago on the seahorse club thread that I thought one of my male seahorses is pregnant becaue his belly was very yellow and sticking out a bit, he is a picture of him when I first thought this:

 

http://s1214.photobucket.com/user/ricky462/media/20131018_162028_zpsdb8c98da.jpg.html'>

 

His belly has lost a little yellow now, but to me seems to be sticking out more than before, what do you guys think?

 

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The one on the right:

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Also here is a current FTS, sorry about the bubbler floating, I cleaned out my sponge on my filter while my fiancé took the picture:

 

http://s1214.photobucket.com/user/ricky462/media/20131022_185823_zps596fed7a.jpg.html'>

I am also thinking of adding in a few Sexy Shrimp this weekend to help eat up some of the excess food, maybe 3 or 4

[andrewkw]

oh man, i wish i could get dwarf seahorses here in canada...

 

You can get them in Canada.

 

Also nice pico best of luck with the dwarfs. One of these days I will try them out.

[gogo]

You can get them in Canada.

 

Also nice pico best of luck with the dwarfs. One of these days I will try them out.

i've tried a few places. but they're out of province...

i'm in southern ontario and would love to find them 'locally'.

[Felicia]

Looking good so far. Keep us posted on the male. I hope he's pregnant and that you get to watch him give birth!

[discus513]

Okay guys I was thinking that my tank was looking a little bit plan so I needed to spice it up a bit, since I was down to only 2 horses and 3 sexy shrimp I needed more movement in the tank, it was rough having to squint your eyes to look for the two seahorses that were in the tank, So I made a small order to spice up the tank, I think it changed the look of it a little bit, What do you guys think?

 

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YOU DIDNT THINK THAT WAS ALL I WAS GOING TO SHOW YOU DID YOU????? LOL

 

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Ahh, that is better! LOL

[Felicia]

Looking good! It definitely looks much better with the gorgonians! I think you should get some nice macros to fill in the space between the gorgonians. It would make it very lush in there.

 

So how many seahorse do you have now? 6? I like the ones that are basically pure white! Very pretty Btw, where did you get your ponies and the gorgonians?

[discus513]

Thank You Sir! Yeah it is much more enjoyable now, Plan to pickup some choice macro to fill it in with, as far as gorgs I am done with them for now, I think I got a nice assortment in there. I think I am going to put some pink galaxy macro and maybe a few more in there. Well I ordered 10 seahorses from them 5 males and 5 females, but they sent me an extra pair, so Now I have 14 total in there 7 males and 7 females. I am going to have to watch my parameters big time over the next few weeks to make sure there is no spikes, and I think I am going to go to an every other day water change for a while.

[discus513]

Well this weekend was a crazy one, I have bad news and good news with my pico. Of course I will give the bad news first. I lost a total of 4 more adult seahorses this weekend, and I'm not 100% sure why although I have an idea. I was messing with another tank of mine in the basement that has no livestock in it, but instead of draining it I just unplugged everything ( or so I thought) and let it pretty much evaporate the water down to only an inch or so ( it was only filled up like 5'' to begin with) the issue was I guess I didn't unplug the heater when I did this so I had a melted plastic heater mount surrounded by a big ball of calcium and salt ball it my tank, the good news is it stayed off the glass so it didn't hurt the tank. Well I decided I wanted to clean this mess up so I went down there and cleaned the melted plastic off the heater so I was down there messing around in that nasty water and cleaning out the tank and I did not wash off, I only wiped them off with a towel ( which is where I think I messed up) I short period later I was messing around in my seahorse tank pulling my internal filter out for a cleaning which luckily I did right in front of the tank because within 5 minutes I had several seahorses that had been fine before I went in the tank laying lifelessly on the bottom of the tank, a couple of them where even jerking around a bit. Well I totally freaked out and went into rescue mode, I had about a gallon and half of saltwater sitting next to the tank that I was planning to do a water change with later on, so I right away did the water change, and before I did it I went in the tank with a turkey baster and blew the detritus up in the water column to get as much of whatever got in my tank out, after that water change it seemed to help a bit but still wasn't enough, so I went to my mixing barrel ( I always keep 30+ gallons of saltwater mixed ) and cut it down with RO water to bring down the SG to 1.022, and did another 1-11/2g of water change, this seemed to really help it stable out and probably saved the lives of the rest of my horses, I did end up loosing 4 horses which is terrible but it could have been a lot worse if I wouldn't have been ready to react! Okay now that I got everyone down in the dumps, maybe this can bring them back up. I Was admiring my tank this weekend ( this was before the crazy story above) when I noticed a pair of seahorses just hooked together spinning in the front of the tank in open water, so as I was watching them I noticed a little flash in the background that caught my eye, as I further investigated there were actually 4 little flashes swimming around the tank and even after the crazy story above the 4 new additions seem to be doing fine Here are some pics!

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Some Ups and some Downs, so far the seahorses have been a wild ride!

[Felicia]

I'm so sorry about the loss! Its good you were right there and reacted quickly, so you could save all the other seahorses. There must have been something in that heater mess that you accidentally transferred into the seahorse tank. My only other thought is that maybe when you pulled out the internal filter, you released/stirred up a ton of detritus and crashed the tank? I think its more likely its from the heater though. So sorry! This hobby can be rough at times!

 

Those new babies are so adorable though! How exciting! What are they eating?

[th64]

Those are some super tiny seahorses lol... I didn't ready any of your posts because they are wayyyy toooooo long haha maybe just hit bullet points... or not. I'm just lazy.