Dwarf Seahorses/ Fact or Fiction?

[Seahorsewisprer]

Hi, Illustrious RC people! I have been trying to raise dwarf seahorses for almost a year now. I have been frequenting seahorse sites and reading books and google searching the EDU sites. I have found a few published theories about these wonderful petite aquatic equines that seem conflicting to me.

I'm hoping I can get some advanced aquarists here to discuss their experiences. And, I hope I can get some people who have never had them, never read or researched how we are supposed to take care of them, to sorta think "out of the box".

Please, if you have any theories or ideas or thoughts, help me!

So, Fact or Fiction:

Dwarf Seahorse are Hardy

I have seen this in books, papers and websites. "Hardy" to me seems to mean that this little species is more tolerant of less than pristine water quality, more forgiving of less than adequate aquatic husbandry and a little stronger immune system. I have found this to be just the opposite! My reef tank is much less work! My tangs, clowns, angels, etc rarely have increased respiratory rates, never refuse a meal, haven't had one die for years! But, even with DAILY water changes, my dwarfs will seem listless, apathetic, and pouty (I know that is not a word, but you know what I mean, right?)

Do you think this species is hardy? I think they come to us very strong, but then become weaker in our care. Are they just not capable of living in a captive environment? Do the papers mean hardy when they are in the ocean, but delicate when placed in a captive environment?

[Izsabelle]

I think they are more hardy then the larger, more delicate horses, but that doesn't mean they are hardy like damsels. I feel the term hardy when used with dwarves is misleading. Dwarves are a lot of work and require dilligent maintance to keep their tank parameters in check. Also, hatching live brine shrimp daily is a hassle that many people are not truly prepared to do 2x a day!

In the commercial business they use the term hardy as a buying catch word. They know people stay away from seahorses not because they are expensive, but because they are difficult to keep alive. And newbies will visit these commercial sites that state the dwarf seahorse is hardy and expect exactly that, a "hardy" fish that will be easy for a newbie, but what they get is an entirely different animal. One that demands daily attention at least 2x a day and pristine water conditions. If you can give them that, then they are relatively easier then the larger species of WC horses. But I feel CB horses are far easier then dwarves. There is no need to hatch live food daily.

So, to answer your questions..
No, they do not fit the defintion of hardy.
I don't think they become weaker in our care, but it's not ideal. WC horses can carry parasites and in the wild these horses are able to continually feed thus enabling their bodies to get the nutrition they need. In the captive tank, they are fed 2x a day and the food is not their food of choice. Brine shrimp is a weak substitute compared to pods.
Yes, they are capable of living in a captive environment. I do think the CB dwarves do better in captive living. I believe you'll find the fry from the WC will do better in your tanks as long as you raise them in separate tanks from the WC parents.
Again, I think the term hardy should not be applied to seahorses in any situation.

[mrme]

while keeping a wild caught Reidi will be a difficult task .. keeping a wild caught dwarf will not be as difficult and a beginner seahorse owner can and usually will pull it off .

and breeding and keeping their fry alive , is very easy .

[Seahorsewisprer]

Izsabelle, your points are very insightful! Websites trying to sell these cute little things say that. I've read it in a book, too, and seen it on hobbyist sites.

But, I wonder if they are as hardy as a H. erectus or H. kuda. I only feed my full sized horses twice a day, and they "look" healthy, rounded torsos, and bellies.

My dwarfs, and pics I've seen of others, seem much skinnier than the full sized horses.

MrMe ( I still love your name!), I've read numerous accounts of experienced aquarists losing all their dwarfs. I have never seen a hobbyist trying to sell their excess dwarfs. I have seen people ask for them, but no one offers. I do agree that when people first get their dwarfs, they are often gravid, and already pregnant, but I don't think many people are successfully raising the fry to adulthood.

Originally posted by Izsabelle


and in the wild these horses are able to continually feed thus enabling their bodies to get the nutrition they need. In the captive tank, they are fed 2x a day and the food is not their food of choice. Brine shrimp is a weak substitute compared to pods.

I have been wondering just this same thought. I do hatch bbs daily , and also grow them to about half size using live phyto ( I just found a new source for cultures! I am so excited! No more stinkin' nanno for my babies!). But, is this really the best thing to be feeding these guys?

So, thats #2 fact or fiction point!




Dwarf Seahorses can be raised on newly hatched baby brine shrimp


True, newly hatched BBS is a great source of HUFAs, as long as it still has a yolk sac. But, people can't live on fatty acids alone. Can fish?

[greenbean36191]

I would say they are pretty hardy. The first time I got them, they were a gift from my grandparents. They came in a little kit that was mailed standard mail with no insulation or anything in the box. At the time I had never kept a SW tank before and had done no research on the little guys. I added them to pretty much the SW equivalent of a goldfish tank: no filtration, just gravel and plastic plants (with freshly mixed SW too). This tank was only about 2 gal and started out with about 14 horses and ended up with about 21. I only did a water change every 2 or three weeks and forgot to feed them fairly often (I was pretty young and irresponsible at the time). When I did the water changes I would always do a 100% change with freshly mixed water, and move the horses from their tank to a holding container and back with no acclimation. Though I didn't know it at the time and never did tests I can say now that trates were likely pretty high. Still dispite all of this abuse they lived for about a year, and I even raised about 3 of the babies to adulthood. IMO that makes them pretty hardy. FWIW my husbandry improved dramaticly before I tried them again.

[Seahorsewisprer]

So, you now have them growing and breeding and snicking and frolicking in the bubbles? Are you feeding them newly hatched BBS?

Do you know why your first group died?

[greenbean36191]

So, you now have them growing and breeding and snicking and frolicking in the bubbles? Are you feeding them newly hatched BBS?

Well I did, but once the male from my only mated pair died off no more mating (he was about twice the size of all the others so I figure he was pretty old; I've never seen another dwarf close to his size). Again I raised some of the babies to adulthood, though I don't remember how many, but he had 4 litters IIRC. I had those guys for about 2 years between the original group and the babies, but since they weren't breeding anymore their numbers slowly dropped off until there were none left. After that I decided to try my hand in the reefing world. Hopefully I will get back into the dwarf scene after Christmas and be a little more serious about the breeding.

Both times I fed them exclusively on BBS and never saw any obvious diseases.

Do you know why your first group died?

Not really. At the time I knew pretty much nothing about SW aquariums and sort of thought of the horses like most think of goldfish. When they died I wasn't too curious as to why. It may well have been something stupid that I did or it may have been old age.

[Seahorsewisprer]

Did they die all at once or one by one?

The babies didn't breed at all? Do you have any theories why?

Thanks for your help in the Nano forum! I did end up getting a tiny HOB filter, but I keep thinking the live BBS are in there, dying and raising the ammonia level! I've actually been changing the media every night before the lights go out!

[greenbean36191]

They all went one by one. There were a few times that I lost two or three in a relatively short time though.

I'm not really sure why none of the others paired up. I have read one article that says that there are alot of reasons that they don't pair up, such as not enough lighting, not enough calcium, not the right tank layout, too much noise, overcrowding, etc. Next time I'm going to try to fix as much of that as I can.

As for the filter, you can try the air driven sponge filters. They are like $5 and IME do a good enough job without getting too many of the BBS or sucking in the ponies. If you want to keep the HOB, maybe just turn it off for an hour or so after you feed, or run it only at night.

[mrme]

hahaha thanks , i like my name to .

maybe the reason to not being succesfull if over , or under feeding them .

[mrme]

or at least possibly one reason

[Wink]

Having tried to keep and breed dwarfs on two occasions, in my experience they are not hardy - at least not when newly wildcaught. Then again, we had alot of problems with almost every wildcaught we have had. Maybe there are a variety of reasons for difficulties with dwarfs.

I think many of them simply do not acclimate to captivity well - the larger species seem more outgoing and eventually get comfortable with us and even enjoy our attentions. I haven't been able to keep dwarfs over any extended time, but I've never had one that seemed comfortable with me.

I'm also concerned about the food issue... the zooplankton they eat naturally has an amazing variety which we can't recreate for them. Brine shrimp probably really aren't ideal.

Another difficulty is recognizing and treating problems. When large seahorses become ill there are symptoms you notice and at least you have the opportunity to treat and try to cure them. You so rarely see anyone talk about a sick dwarf... they usually don't have symptoms so you have no opportunity to treat. They seem fine one day and the next they are dead - and without knowing the cause you can't even address the problem for any remaining dwarfs.

Aboout breeding, it seems about 50% of wildcaught males arrive pregnant indicating that their normal state in the ocean is pregnant. On the other hand, it seems that only fairly rarely does an individual dwarf continue to breed after capture - most either stop breeding or at least breed less frequently. Is this related to the food issue? Stress issues? Are the same problems found with captive bred dwarfs?

I have way more questions then answers but it's good to see an idea exchange like this one.

[Seahorsewisprer]

Vicky, your ideas are very interesting. I feel my loss was because of not recognizing a problem. I have since noticed that my little ones do tell me when something is amiss. They don't seem to be as hungry, sorta listless. I do a water change, and a few hours later, they eat like crazy! So, that brings me to the next question to ponder:

Fact or Fiction? Dwarf Seahorses are best kept in a 10 gallon or less aquarium

I think one of the stressors on these little specimens is the incredibly high bioload required to keep them in these relatively small water volumes. The water becomes hyper saline, higher than healthy levels of toxic elements, too warm, then we do a water change, and the water is "good" again. Temps are up and down, depending on room temps, very quickly. Salinity up and down.

The quick changes, so often must be stressful to even a "hardy" fish. We would never even think of treating a powder blue tang like that!

Not to mention the maintenance that is required to run a set up like this. Those with mechanical filtration must turn off the pump when feeding, or the live food will be sucked up into the medium and die, increasing the bioload on the limited natural filtration system. I have started changing the media nightly. Any neglect quickly shows in our captive pets.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the rationale behind keeping these high bioload creatures, is something referred to as "stocking density". There must be enough food directly surrounding the dwarf for it to acquire the nutrition it needs. I am not sure about this concept. Here's my hypothesis: If you take 1 cc of live food and put it in a 5 gallon tank with 6 dwarfs and the same amount in a 20 gallon tank with 6 dwarfs, the food would still be eaten, it would just take the dwarfs in the 20 longer, provided there is no mechanical filtration to pull the food out of the system.

We would need to add live phyto to keep the live food nutritious while it was being hunted by the dwarfs.

Maybe we could put a flashlight on the side where the dwarfs congregate to encourage the food to come over for dinner!

A previous poster mentioned that our captive fish have a disadvantage over their in-the-ocean counterparts, because they are not able to hunt for food all day long.

I wonder if we had larger tanks, if it could be healthier? If we could find a way around the issues?

[rasher2nd]

Greetings,

My experience with dwarf seahorses is only about 6 months and revolves around a nanocube and ALOT of work. Unfortunately our tank crashed when we were hit with a heatwave this summer and we lost all our lil friends

During that time I was testing and changing water weekly and hatching baby brine shrimp daily for 2 feedings a day. Their color and detail was beautiful! The seahorses seemed happy and expressed personalities to a point that we had to name them. (R.I.P.-X(treme), Upside, Goldie "the pipefish rider", Lead(er) and Follow(er).). They were usually very active and swimming about looking for a better hitching post or meal. The dwarfes came paired but never had a chance to mate. I don't know the reason for this but I could speculate it was the water quality. I was always off in my pH level at least a little.

Since then we have switched to a larger tank and larger seahorses. The big boys (and girls) don't seem to have as much personality as the dwarves. They spend most of their time hunting; which is funny since they are captive bred and eat frozen mysis like pigs. Our oldest female (oldest in the tank) however is quite active and swims - yes swims - all over the tank in what I can only refer to as "playing".

I don't know that this helped you any but there it is. Good luck with the stable.

Rick & Shelly

[Seahorsewisprer]

Thanks, Rick & Shelly! Tiny tanks are so hard to keep stable! Especially during a heat wave, and where I am, it's either frigid cold or very hot! (We do have a week or 2 in the spring and fall that is nice!)

I have my little guys in a five gallon algae magnet right now. I want to move them to a larger tank. I have on hand a plain ol' Walmart 10 gallon or my 20 gallon specialty tank, with a canopy and cabinet. I can't decide which one to use! I have culture of live food (pods, baby red shrimp, red phyto) that I think I can kick up to keep a 20 stocked with a little bit of live food all the time. And, my fish room is in the basement, so the temp issue is more stable.

But, I only have 5 dwarfs. Maybe, in a 20 gallon, we'll rarely see 'em!

So, I want to try to set this up with out any mechanical filtration. I think having the liitle HOB filter on the back is one of the stressors. It must be turned off when I feed. Plus, the panty hose covering the intake actually prevents it from being a mechanical filter. It's just a stinkin' water mover! I have been using those pads that are supposed to be carbon, ammonia and phosphate removers, but the tank is still not healthy. The nuisance algae grows much better than the macro!

So, do you think the 20 is too big or too small to be a healthy environment? I did start out with this tank at the beginning of the year, but put on an HOB refugium, that stunk so bad when I took it down! I did find issues with amphopods/grammarus shrimps.

Can any smart fish people help me figure out how to make it work? Make it a little Gulf o' Mexico biotope?

[sealover113]

I think 20 might be just a bit too big. Your idea sounds cool though.

[Wink]

For 5 dwarves, I think I'd use one of the bigger tanks as a sump for the 5.

[sealover113]

Thats an idea too.

[Seahorsewisprer]

Hey, there's an idea! I had the HOB refugia on the 20, but had a adult dwarf get sucked up in the RIO. But, with an under the cabinet sump/refugia, I could just use gravity to fill it, and the little rio to pump it back up! With the head push of 2 (?) feet, the flow would be negligable!

Do you think the 20 is too big because of the feeding density issue, or because they would be so hard to see?

A 20 gallon refugia on 5 gallon tank would be too cool! I've never set up a tank with a sump 4 x's bigger than the main tank!

But, I'd have to do an external overflow.....or drill a 5 gallon tank!

Thanks!!! I'm going to think about that for a bit!

[sealover113]

I would think mostly the feeding density, but it would be hard them too sometimes.

[Seahorsewisprer]

Why? Couldn't we re-create some sort of simulation of the gulf o' Mexico?

What I have found in my experience of keeping dwarfs, is I totally suck at nano tanks! Mine is a swamp! The sand bed needs syphoning daily, the calerpa competes with nuisance algae and loses!

Can you come to my house and tell me what I'm doing wrong? This tank bites!

[Wink]

Four X bigger sump is nothing.... Hubby has 1 gallon Kritter Keepers as seahorse nurseries with a 29 gallon sump, works great! He has no pump.. uses an airlift tube to bring water from the sump to the nurseries and gravity overflow back to the sump. When the set up is complete he will have 4 kritter keepers for each of 2 sumps.

[greenbean36191]

How would having the 20 gal as a sump help with feeding density? Unless you turn off the flow to and from the sump during feeding you are trying to stock the sump plus the display with food. If I understood what you were saying about the HOB filter, turning things off during feeding was something you were trying to avoid. I really don't have a better idea for your filter situation, but I think the plain 10 gal is probably a much better idea than the tank with a sump. The 10 gal max is based on what more experienced seahorse keepers have tried and I think going against their advice would be a mistake, at least until you have more experience. I'm sure it can be done, but if these people have been doing this for years and feel that anything bigger than a 10 gal isn't worth it I doubt you will find that it is.

As far as stability goes, I would only really worry about pH, and ammonia. Most of the other stuff is pretty variable in the gulf, especially temp. I remember last year when I was going to one of the marine labs down there that I checked the water temp a couple of times a day for the days before I went and in that time it went from the mid 60s to around 80 during the course of one day and then the next day it was back in the upper 60s (the variability does depend on the season though). The temp naturally changes more in the shallower areas these guys come from. Also, while nitrates and nitrites are a good indicator of water quality they aren't very toxic to fish (in studies fish were unaffected to over 100ppm).

Moreso than stability, I really think the key element is feeding. I think you may very well be right that they need more in their diet than BBS.

[pncstod]

Hey wink, can you post some pics of the kritter keepers and sump set up?

[pncstod]

Wow, fifteen degree fluctuation is hard for me to believe, even so they are surviving these fluctuations in water that is in all other ways ideal. Our tanks no matter how good our husbandry skills are, are not ideal conditions.
Water temp changes, nitrates and nitrites may not be toxic short term, but these are all stress factors. Stress factors most defiantly shorten the life span of fish. Combine stress with inadequate food such as BBS and the dwarfs are susceptible to most anything.

I believe stability is as important as nutrition. To me a good size sump would make the dwarf tank much more stable. Instead of turning a pump off during feeding, why couldn't you turn a light on. Having a light source at the bottom of the tank would keep the BBS away from the overflow. Of course keeping the dwarfs out of the sump would be an issue, but it sounds like Wink's hubby may have a solution for that.