Seahorses and biocubes

[KarenM]

I'm missing my tank and considering a small biocube, maybe 10g or so. Is this big enough for a couple of seahorses? How do you buy them and gaurantee they won't have babies (just want a few!)?

[chatfouz]

I'm missing my tank and considering a small biocube, maybe 10g or so. Is this big enough for a couple of seahorses? How do you buy them and gaurantee they won't have babies (just want a few!)?

yes and no. you can keep the mini seahorses, zoes (nickname) in a ten. actually its easier in a smaller. BUT you must make live food. they ONLY eat live food. as such it takes weekly water changes, daily live cultures grown, so basically heavy maintenance.

you "can" keep larger horses in a ten. like .comes, .erectus, etc. BUT they will outgrow it and if your willing to upgrade as they grow then sure. small pen for small babies. but as they grow they need bigger playpen. about a year if you buy em young. it does take much less maintenance but you will have to upgrade.

as far as babies its rather easy, just get one sex. all girls etc. if you get from an online dealer you can order just one sex. they are easy to tell apart.

but whatever you do STAY AWAY from kellogi. they are cheap but due to the way they are bred and raised they do not have the best record and "will most likely" pass disease to other farm bred seahorses. but that is my advice on that others may tell you differently.

Edited April 8, 2008 by chatfouz

[Richard]

The main problem with biocubes is that they tend to run a little too warm for most seahorses. Ideally you want to keep seahorses no warmer than 76F. Even though most seahorses available are tropical, in an aquarium they tend to be more prone to bacterial infections at warmer temps so that is the reason for the lower temp. You can make it work with some mods from nanotuners.com, either upgraded fan cooling or even a minichiller.

All the full size horses require more room than a ten gallon and dwarf seahorses are easier to keep in a smaller tank plus they require daily hatching of brine shrimp since they generally will only eat live food.

ORA is currently producing H. fuscus (aka the Sea Pony). They are a nice in between horse growing to only around 3" long. So you could keep two in a biocube 14 gallon or if you skipped the biocube and went with a standard 20 gallon I would say you could stock it with up to 4 of them. To avoid babies you just go with a single sex tank. Typically people will stick with only females because male seahorses can sometimes have problems with their pouches. Also with the Fuscus the females are more active & colorful. The downside to fuscus right now is they are fairly expensive, expect around $100 or so per horse. ORA is only releasing single sex at this time because they are the only ones in the US producing them and they want to keep the price up while they can. I have 6 pairs and around a dozen 4 month old babies. If I ever get better at raising them I might have some extras for sale someday.

[+ACampbell]

Richard,

Thanks for this information. That is great news that H. Fuscus can be obtained. I have wanted to do this type for some time, but could never find them.

I would be interested in some offspring in the future. I just need to break down and build a setup for them.