Dwarf Seahorses -- Sand Bed or Crushed Coral?

[Feather Duster]

Hi All,
I am thinking about a setting up a 10g dwarf tank. I have done alot of reading about them here, in books and over at seahorse.org. How are people setting up substrate these days?

Crushed coral or sand bed? What grain size and depth?

If it is a sand bed, do you make it a "live" bed and if so how without introducing possible harmful criters?

Thanks!

[Airel]

Hi Feather,

I would suggest 1-2" LSB for substrate starting with plain sand. I will bring this question to Alisa's attention and she can give you advice on how to seed without adding harmful critters.

HTH,
DeAnne:D

[SeaNemesis]

I would certainly go with a sand bed, it will become live as it matures, the type of sand could be your choice. I use black sand because it shows them off better and you can see more clearly if you have any fry die off. As far as critters go, you can safely add snails and tiny hermits. I have 3" depth in my tank and all is well. I have had this particular setup for over a year.
Due to the small size of the dwarfs I really try to stay simple. The biggest threat to them is hydroids and they can get this by carrying them and from adding live rock and even from snails and hermits themselves. I srub shells with a clean toothbrush and fresh water. I also FW dip my dwarfs and keep them in a hosp tank for 3 days. I do not use caulerpa that comes from dwarf collection places because I have often seen hydroids attached to these.Decapping your brine eggs also helps prevent the risk of hydroids.
As far as the live rock goes, I took some rock from my established larger species seahorse tank and put it in a 30 gal tank, it looked clean of hydroids and was in my 30 gal tank 2 months before I had a suprise delivery of OR fry. I put some into my 30 gal tank and they did very well, but 3 weeks into their care I started having problems with hydroids. Apparently adding the right environment to what I thought of as hydroid free rock provided the right atmosphere for hydroid spores to establish themselves and take root.Hydroids are very dangerous to dwarfs and fry and will kill them. This is the main reason why I keep their tanks simple. HTH:)

[Feather Duster]

Hi, thanks for the answers!

I am still kinda confused how the dead sand becomes a live sand bed without putting live rock or putting some live sand in from another tank. Putting in live sand can introduce worms, which I understand can kill the little horses so this seems just as bad as putting LR in.

Please, talk me through this step by step. Put in sand, then what? Sorry if this seems over redundant, I have done a reef before but if I do dwarfs I want to set it up right and it is different.

Thanks!

[SeaNemesis]

That is what we are here for :) to answer questions. The live sand becomes live when it establishes it's biological bacterias. This is done bt means of cycling. I prefer the fishless cycle by adding either some frozen mysis shrimp or a piece of 2 of cocktail shrimp. The process takes about 4 weeks. You really want to allow your ammonia level, then nitrite levels to really max out, add more shrimps if necessary. This will also establish nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria in your sponge filter as well.

Ok add the sand and the water. Then add your shrimp. Wait about 3 days and test. You want to watch your ammonia and allow it to really max out. After your ammonia drops and you get a max nitrite you are doing good. Once that nitrite drops to 0 you are done and cycled and can add seahorses. I have an article at www.seahorse.org. Look in the library under articles>husbandry. That should help you out tons. I pretty much have step by step in there. And what is not answered there I will answer here :)

[Feather Duster]

Thanks for your answers and the welcome! I am sure I will be posting more questions as they come up. :D