Fish and Seahorses together??

[purplehaze]

Would you guys mix fish with sehorses in a breeding setup?
I mean each pair has it's own tank, but with a central filtration system!

[Julio]

you can keep fish that are not too fast and that are small enough to allow enough food to be droped in the tank for the seahorses to feed.

[purplehaze]

Julio, I mean the seahorses would have their own tank.

But I am not sure if this is a good idea because of the different requierments seahorses and clownfish/Bangaii's/Pseudocromis have. Another issue would be parasites. I always QT everything I add to my system,but who knows!!

[Julio]

well in a species tank they will do great.

[rsman]

yes you can mix seahorses and fish in the same system.

[JHardman]

They only thing that has held me back from adding horses to the broodstock system has been the temps... I keep my clowns at 83.3°F which is too high for SHs... Or at least this is what I have been repeatedly told by people with much more experience than I.

I have been tempted to lower the clowns to 78°F and add some H. erectus to the system then slowly raise the temp back the 81°F range. But frankly I am worried that I will either stop the clowns from spawning for months or kill the SHs.

So... bottom line, yes you can mix, but temp might be more of an issue than anything else like disease.

BTW... SHs do carry things that will get clowns, found that out the hard way.

[rsman]

I do a number of things to keep temps almost where I want them, though I do have a problem keeping the temps up durring cooler weather, you can supply cooler water to some tanks and warmer water to other tanks using different setups and larger sumps. also by using fans over the seahorse tanks you cool the water down in those nicely, it increases evaporation which I use to topoff with kalk which helps with corals and ph. also a tank between the return and seahorse tanks allows you to cool the water down before it reaches the seahorses.

with very careful aclimation and quarantine you can prevent issues with diseases, it is more difficult than most fish, but thats seahorses in general .

[purplehaze]

Originally posted by JHardman
They only thing that has held me back from adding horses to the broodstock system has been the temps... I keep my clowns at 83.3°F which is too high for SHs... Or at least this is what I have been repeatedly told by people with much more experience than I.

I have been tempted to lower the clowns to 78°F and add some H. erectus to the system then slowly raise the temp back the 81°F range. But frankly I am worried that I will either stop the clowns from spawning for months or kill the SHs.

So... bottom line, yes you can mix, but temp might be more of an issue than anything else like disease.

BTW... SHs do carry things that will get clowns, found that out the hard way.

Exactly that's what I am afraid of ,the Temp. What makes me wonder why everybody says that seahorses have to be kept in lower temp, is that for example H.erectus is found in the caribbean where the water temp. can get pretty high.
I'll do some research about this temp thing and tell you later.

What disease did they pass on to your clowns

[purplehaze]

Originally posted by rsman
I do a number of things to keep temps almost where I want them, though I do have a problem keeping the temps up durring cooler weather, you can supply cooler water to some tanks and warmer water to other tanks using different setups and larger sumps. also by using fans over the seahorse tanks you cool the water down in those nicely, it increases evaporation which I use to topoff with kalk which helps with corals and ph. also a tank between the return and seahorse tanks allows you to cool the water down before it reaches the seahorses.

with very careful aclimation and quarantine you can prevent issues with diseases, it is more difficult than most fish, but thats seahorses in general .

rsman, I was thinking about something like that, but I am not sure if it would work...
Maybe if the cooled water (using a chiller or similar ) enters the Seahorse tank first

[David M]

I have been breeding seahorses (mostly H. erectus) ) for several years now. Yes temp would be a problem. Also I have learned the hard way that seahorses are best kept in species only systems, and by that I mean it's best not to even mix Hippocampus species. The source is another concern. I certainly wouldn't introduce wild caught seahorses to a system full of nice and healthy captive bred clowns, etc. Captive bred seahorses are expensive and it's nuts to put them into a system with any wild caught fish. In short my opinion is no, don't mix them. Not saying it can't be done, just that IME and that of other breeders, it's not a very good idea.

[rsman]

you dont have to cool it much, though erectus are found in water that gets nice and warm, temps are very species dependant, high temps are hard on some of them.

how effective everything is, all depends on your exact setup, for me water from the sump goes into seperate areas 1 is heated and that return provides for corals, clowns, dottybacks, cardinals, gobies and the other warmer water fish, the other goes into everything else on the system (seahorses, micro & macro algae, coil denitrator, skimmer, rotifers, brine shrimp .....)

[JHardman]

And there is one of the much more experienced people telling me it again. Congrats on the recent shipments David!

The disease? I have no idea, it did not develop slowly enough to truely show symptoms I could tie to anything. In the morning a horse would show a light colored spot and would be dead by the end of the day. The clowns would show some "heads up" swimming, then some black areas, then dead within 24 hours. The only thing that put a dent in the progress was heavy application of antibiotics.

[purplehaze]

David M, thanks for your answer...I 'll follow your advice

rsman, did you ever have any problems mixing all those species?
I have to say you have a very compact system running

JHardman, how many clowns did you loose?
After this you did separate the fish from the seahorse, right?

[JHardman]

Originally posted by purplehaze
JHardman, how many clowns did you loose?
After this you did separate the fish from the seahorse, right?

I lost three pairs that were isolated (QT). I did not even have them in the same system, just cross contamination with tools.

[ediaz]

Hey Hardman how is it going?
Guys if you read the question:
Would you guys mix fish with sehorses in a breeding setup?
Seahorses are fish!

[David M]

Yes, seahorses are fish However, like many other fish, they have special needs and should be treated appropriately.
African chichlids are fish too, but I don't advise adding them into a clownfish system

[purplehaze]

JHardman: Good to hear that the Seahorses weren't in your breeding setup .

Ediaz: You are naturally right, but that was the simpliest way to put it

Ok I found some info regarding the temp....
H.kuda was kept at 30± 0.22ºC ( 86ºF ) and H. fuscus at 28ºC (77 º) with no negative effects.