Should I or not?

[orlin1261]

I have a 6 gal. nano reef: 3"DSB, Live Rock, some Caulerpa, 5 mushroom corals, 2 turbo snails, 1 very small hermit crab, 1 feather duster, Skilter, and flourescent lighting. Temp is constant at 77-78, pH 8.3, calcium 440, and an airstone generating plenty of oxygen. All other water tests are on the mark. :D

Should I add a dwarf seahorse? How difficult are they to maintain? How many times a day do you feed them and how much? Is a combination of liquid invert/filter feed food and frozen brine shrimp or mysis ok? :confused:

[ReefNutPA]

Seahorses do best in groups, so you should not add just one dwarf seahorse to your tank. For the most part, dwarf seahorses will eat only live newly hatched brine shrimp. Larger brine shrimp (live or frozen) will be too big for them to eat. You may be able to get them to eat frozen baby brine shrimp over time. Keep in mind brine shrimp is not a very nutritous food and would need to be enriched with either Selcon or another type of vitamin/enhancer. Invert food cannot be used for food for seahorses.

Tom

[Airel]

Hi Orlin,

Your 6 gal sounds like a perfect home for dwarf seahorses. I would start out with 12 horses and you will have plenty of room to keep any fry they may have. Dwarf horses are not too difficult to keep IMO...just time consuming. Any seahorse, no matter what the species is difficult to keep to some extent. Dwarf horses live solely on a diet of live baby brine shrimp. So, if you are ready to commit yourself to constantly hatching brine shrimp..then GO FOR IT!!! They are just adorable little creatures that will steal your heart. They are prolific and will shower you with fry. I would strongly suggest decapping your brine shrimp eggs. If you need help with that, let me know and I'll send you exact directions. As long as your hermit stays tiny, he should be fine. I may would keep a CLOSE eye on him. Nassarius snails are my favorite with the larger species of horses and with dwarfs. I'm not certain about your mushroom corals. I know that some mushrooms will eat fish, etc If yours is this type, it will need to go. Horses are not picky about where they hitch and will sit there and let a coral consume them.

Best of Luck to you.

HTH,
DeAnne:)

[Reeefer]

Airel, could you send me those instructions please?

[Airel]

Sure, here ya go!!! I copied and pasted the directions from the library at Seahorse.org Hope it helps.

Decapsulation:

Materials needed:

Brine shrimp net
2 tsp Artemia cysts
2 cups of luke warm water
2/3 cup of regular bleach
Air pump and airline tubing
Cloths Pin (to hold airline)
Sodium Thiosulfate (Dechlorinator)

Removing the outer shell from an artemia cyst has many benefits. First of all it prevents any unwanted contaminants (hydroids, etc.) from entering your rearing system. Secondly there is no need to deal with the shells after the artemia hatches, and last but not least the newly hatched artemia are much higher in nutritional value because they haven't had to use all their resources to break out of the shell. The following method is the one we use and it can be scaled up to however much you need to hatch. The decapsulated cysts can be stored in the fridge for about a week and still work well.

Step 1:
Add 2 cups of luke warm water to a suitable container (a jar or plastic container work well). Clip the airline to the edge and make sure that it is all the way to the bottom of the container, so it really bubbles the water. You want the cysts to stay in motion. Add 2 teaspoons of cysts, and wait one hour, washing the cysts off the side occasionally with an eye dropper (just suck up a little water from the container).


Step 2:
After one hour the cysts are hydrated. The following images show the difference between dehydrated and hydrated cysts:


At this point we are ready to decapsulate. Add 2/3 cup of bleach to the container and watch closely. There will be three color changes. First they are brown, then light gray, then orange. When they reach the orange stage they will need to be immediately poured in to the brine shrimp net and rinsed with cold water. Pour dechlor over them as well to neutralize the bleach. An easy way to check the cysts is to pour a little through the brine shrimp net and see what they look like. You want to see mostly orange, but a few gray ones. If you over bleach them they will not hatch, so it's better to stop the reaction at this point. The following images show the color change at 30 times magnification:


The amount of bleach can be increased or reduced to increase or decrease the speed of the process.

Step 3:
After thoroughly rinsing the cysts until no odor of bleach remains, squeeze the net to remove as much water as possible and place them into a sealed container. Place this in the fridge and use what you need daily. The cysts should last at least a week.

Hatching:

Hatching artemia takes about 24 hours. After they are hatched, we give them another 24 hours to reach the next stage in their development, called the Instar II stage. At this point the artemia is capable of ingesting food or nutrients. We enrich all ours with a HUFA booster such as Selco. This is necessary as seahorse fry generally doesn't do well on unenriched artemia. We use three "hatchers". One is where the actual hatching takes place, the next is a holding "hatcher" to wait until they are at Instar II, and the third is the enrichment "hatcher".

If you use decapsulated cysts, you must have A LOT of bubbles in the hatcher. Decasulation removes the shell which in turn takes away their ability to float. If you don't have enough circulation in the hatcher, you'll end up with clumps of cysts.