My first seahorse adventure

[jimhobbs]

Good evening all!:)
I've got a ten gallon tank that has been setup for about 1.5years...It has a mature DSB that was seeded with critters from my main tank...They orriginated from a shipment from IPSF over two years ago...The tank has 17lbs marshall live rock and a single torch coral...Lighting is provided by two 27watt 5000K fixtures, with two 15 watt actinics...There is a single mj400 in the back corner behind the live rock for circulation{I can remove this if it is too much for the seahorses}...I was planning on adding some plastic plants for hitching posts, and lowering the temp from 80 degrees to around 77 for the horses...I'm looking at the tank raised mustangs at this link (http://www.ffexpress.com/fish/seahorses/mustang.htm)...They are 35 dollars each, but are suposed to take frozen shrimp as a diet...Please click on the link and tell me what you think of my plan so far:)

Thanks for any and all advice:)

Best regards
jim

[SeaNemesis]

Ocean Rider Seahorse are great. I highly recommend them. As for your tank though. It is recommeded to have a tank 3 times their height. Ocean Rider suggests a tank at 28" high. You can transfer your tank contents into the other tank.

[jimhobbs]

<FONT face="verdana,arial, helvetica" size="1" color="#000000" ><b><i>voice from above</i></b></font>
<b><FONT face="arial, helvetica" size="5" color="#000000" ><b><i>"Enough flirting! jimhobbs!"</b></i></b></font>

hehe
OK ok, so the mustangs from the link I provided are out for this tank...Do they breed a dwarf species anywhere that is already trained to take frozen shrimp?..The tank I have is right beside my monitor, and has already matured and is stable...I've never done seahorses before{I guess that's obvious};) and REFUSE to not do it right:)

Thanks for the help!:)

[Edited by jimhobbs on 04-13-2001 at 11:59 PM]

[Airel]

Hi Jim,
OceanRider is breeding a dwarf species for shipping towards the end of this year. They are listed as Mo'olio's on the webiste. I am assuming they will also eat the frozen mysis that we feed other OR horses. Other than OR, I do not know of anyone else breeding and selling tank raised dwarfs or any that will eat frozen foods. Many have tried to train the dwarf to frozen foods but had no luck at all. So, if you want to do dwarfs get those hatcheries ready!!!

I would also look at purchasing directly from Ocean Rider. http://www.oceanrider.com The Mustangs are $25 each or $48/pr. I find the shipping is no more from Hawaii than from anywhere else and the horses are only shipped once. They also have some First Time Buyer's specials going on that I think are teriffic deals. You can also email Carol directly and ask her about lfs in your area selling her horses.

HTH,
DeAnne :)

See my Seahorse Corral: http://community.webshots.com/user/deannel1

[SeaNemesis]

Those Mo'olio's are beautiful. I talked to Carol from Ocean Rider yesterday when she called me and they are having trouble getting them to eat anything besides brine. Dwarfs are wonderful little seahorses. You do need to decapp and hatch BBS for them UNLESS you have some smaller horses that eat frozen. I was able to get my dwarfs without realizing it actually to eat frozen mysis when they saw the Reidi sub adults eat them. This was great, but the reality of this becoming an easy task is slim at best and certainly not all will be able to do this. I decap brine cysts once or twice a week and store some in the refridgerator, and hatch them out as needed. They remain good in the refriderator for about a week. Decapping is extremely important to help reduce the chance of hydroids and it provides a higher hatchrate and in a slightly shorty time frame and removes any possible unwanted pathogens. I recently sent in my article based upon a controlled one year study on hydroids.
Regards,
Alisa