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Hey everyone. Thanks for all the help on other posts and questions.Well i wanted to make a sea horse 10g tank. I heard yesterday that they banned all wild caught seahorses being sold. I know its a great thing, but i dont think i can find one. Any wwho..

So i am thinking of a 10 gallon sea horse awuarium. I know this is difficult but I have many resources and easy reasons for them.. 1. I have a teacher who used to be a marine biologist 2. i am always running to the pet store for meh frog. 3. I can raise live food myself.

A few questions i have are..
1. Any commenly aviliable live plants that arent coral for him to hang out on?
2. Does he/she needs a group or a friend?
3. Any best type of filter, I have an HOB but i can also get a undertank or a small filter made for a 2.5 in there.
4. I know live food is a most, but can frozen bloodworms be used ocasionaly?
5. I also read that they need to be fed often, so how long can he go with out eating?
6. Can I ride mine to school..




Thank you, i ahve alot of questions because i can't find alot of answers elsewhere.

Thansk a bunch!

Sea horses are specialised fishes with specialised requirements. First of all I think you'll find they need MUCH more space than a 10 gallon setup - I'd recommend a 55 as a MINIMUM setup. Not least because controlling pollutant levels is going to be considerably easier in a 55 than a 10, and Sea Horses are fairly delicate when it comes to pollutants in the water. Managing the water is made all the more difficult because Sea Horses don't like currents that are too strong: they're not fast swimmers. The throughput your filter would have to maintain in a 10G to keep it habitable even IF the Sea Horses didn't grow too big for a 10, would create a current that would overpwer their swimming abilities.

Next, Sea Horses have special dietary needs. They NEED to eat hard shelled small crustaceans such as Amphipods, in order to gain enough calcareous material to build their own bony armour. If they're fed on live Brine Shrimp alone (and you'll find that they'll probably only take living foods) they suffer from a condition that resembles osteoporosis in humans. Therefore you need to set up a refugium in which the Amphipods are cultivated, to provide a constant source of live food for the Sea Horses. You would be FAR better off holding back until you can afford a 55, THEN use the 10G as a refugium for the Amphipods.

In a 55, you would be able to keep 3, maybe 4 individuals, depending upon species. The aquarium should be furnished with plenty of live rock, branched coral skeletons and something resembling gorgonians (sea fans) - chances are unless you wanted to cultivate live ones, you'd have to go with an artificial substitute for these. The aquarium should be furnished also with macroalgae for the Sea Horses to wrap their prehensile tails around.

While it IS possible to keep one or two other VERY carefully selected species of fish with the Sea Horses in the aquarium, most keepers prefer to maintain them in a species aquarium. Basically, Sea Horses are not active hunters, instead they hover around parts of their surroundings and pick off small creatures from whatever object they are currently clinging to, and thus they are incapable of competing with fast moving, active feeders. It is possible to keep a Mandarin Fish living with them, because Mandarin Fishes don't compete in the upper layers of the aquarium, remaining close to the substrate, but Mandarin Fishes again need a constant supply of Amphipods in their diet, so if you DO keep a Mandarin Fish alongside Sea Horses (again, in a 55 gallon setup as a minimum) then you'll need to cultivate LOTS of Amphipods. in a refugium, this isn't a problem, the population will soon explode quite nicely if you set up the refugium correctly, but then you have to make sure that everyone in the aquarium receives their share - time to invest in a turkey baster to deliver the Amphipods to the required spots to that everyone can feed adequately!

For a VERY detailed account of Sea Horses and their care, go to this page which covers the fishes in depth.

If you DO take on the challenge of keeping Sea Horses, you should also consider learning how to distinguish male from female, and arrange for equal numbers of each to be present, because Sea Horses form monogamous pair bonds, so it's wise to have equal numbers of each to allow such pair bonds to form. Details again are on the page I linked.

Note that there ARE some "Dwarf" species belonging to Genera other than Hippocampus - the trouble with these being that their maintenance requirements are not as well known, and so although one or two species LOOK as if they're small enough for a 10G, again, we're back to the problem of water quality, and the maintenance thereof in such a small volume. Even with tiny "Dwarf" species, your aquarium is going to take on the aspect of an intensive care unit, and YOU are going to be the person in charge - are you prepared to devote the time, effort, capital and research hours required to set up a small system with the requisite technology, then maintain it intensively? Remember, all it takes is for you to be out of commission for a while because of, say, a road traffic accident, and that setup is then going to have to be handed over to another experienced keeper for the duration of your recovery - another issue to consider when taking on demanding fishes such as Sea Horses. The learning curve for these fishes will be steep.

With some of the dwarf species, you COULD, in theory, run a 10G with an equal sized sump/refugium, but again, even with twice the water volume, water quality management will be an interesting exercise. Holding back until you can set up a 55 with the 10 as a refugium for Amphipod/Copepod culture will VASTLY increase your chances of success, because water quality will be a LOT easier to manage with the increased volume.

Oh, and quite a few inverts will cause problems too. Anemones and LPS corals are STRENG VERBOTEN because they'll kill the Sea Horses, likewise remove ALL hitch hiker crabs from your live rock because some of them will try and eat your Sea Horses! Live coral culture is going to be off the list too (with very few exceptions) because the cnidoblasts or stinging cells of the coral polyps will irritate your Sea Horses, and may even cause them to become e to secondary infections.

However, if you DO hold back, wait until you can obtain a 55, then set that up accordingly, not only will you stand a MUCH greater chance of success (and remember, you NEED a refugium for Amphipod culture with Sea Horses in addition to the basic 55G) but you may be able to persuade them to breed. Captive bred Sea Horses are available, and though they are expensive, they're also much more likely to adapt to life in your aquarium than wild caught ones.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Actually many keep seahorses in nanotanks depending on the exact species. My friend who was breeding seahorses said a hex tank is best though instead of long shallow tanks. A 10 is fairly small and I'd probably go with a 20high for a first seahorse tank. There are many grasses and plants available for seahorse use. I know I've seen several on floridapets.com and was wondering how my tank might look with a bed of grass in the front. Most captive bred seahorses will take frozen food easily but you need to feed marine foods not freshwater foods. Freshwater foods lack certain nutrients and will have to be soaked in other things to make them healthy. There's a care guide here: http://seahorse.org/library/articles/SeahorseFactsAndInfo.shtml I know I had a link to a really good site but I seem to have lost it.

Oh I don't doubt that people do keep some Sea Horse species in small aquaria. However, this does beg the question - how much prior marine fishkeeping experience did they acquire on easier, less demanding setups before tackling that project?

Not a project I'd tackle without cutting my teeth on something less demanding for at least two years first. But then I'm old enough to stop at the "Don't Walk" sign.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I don't think starting with a small tank is all that difficult so long as you've kept some kind of tank even if it's just freshwater ones before hand. It requires going really slowly and doing alot of research but overall I've found starting with small tanks to be no more difficult than setting up a large tank. Now anything under a 10g is another story. I hate setting up 10g or smaller tanks. It's such a pain to maintain them no matter what you stock them with. But if research is done and you don't get impatient I don't see a 20g as being any more difficult than a 55g.

X_X I got it.. no sea horse.

Well, not exactly "no Sea Horse" ... just be prepared for a small setup to me more high-maintenance than a larger one because of the smaller water volume. I recommend bigger setups for a first marine aquarium precisely because water management is easier - the larger volume takes longer for the fishes to pollute to a potentially dangerous level. Plus, fishes ALWAYS appreciate more space!

There ARE some unusual dwarf spceimens that could be housed in a small setup, but, if you're going to run with this, make sure you know what you're taking on before spending a penny on the setup, make careful plans, and if your setup is a real nano-tank, be ready to perform water changes often.

The same applies to freshwater too, but the margin for error in freshwater is bigger because freshwater fishes have adapted to live in water whose constituents vary within a relatively wide margin - for example, the difference between wet and dry seasons in the tropics. Marine fishes, on the other hand, have adapted to live in a much more stable environment, where the variation in water chemistry is far lower, and thus the margin for error is that much narrower. Remember that basic fact, and you CAN, if you're prepared to put effort into the project, set up a small Sea Horse aquarium. I emphasise, however, that it will require more effort on your part to remain habitable. And don't forget the Amphipod refugium as part of the setup as well!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

If your stuck with a 10g then I suggest chosing something different. Finding a seahorse species that lives happily in that tank and then maintaining it could be quite a pain. It's just not tall enough to do much with.