Horses?

[sasquatch]

If you were going to put together the perfect pony palace what would you need for optimal results? Steve

[lcstorc]

Great water quality. Slightly lower temp. Lots of hitching posts. A feeding station. No food competition.
Are you getting ponies?
That would be very cool. I miss mine terribly.

[sasquatch]

Hoped you would chime in Lynn, the appeal is very very strong, but, over time I realize Yes! a crash helmet is a good thing, so now I like to research way before I run into a wall. How much area is required? your shared water set up seems to be almost a requirement for good water maintenance.

[lcstorc]

It both helps and hurts. It is great for the water quality, but the temp is a bit of an issue. Everyone at seahorse.org says the problems I have had are related to temp. I did just get a chiller and now have everything at 78. That is a bit cool for a reef but a bit on the high end for ponies. Before it was at 80-82. I'm hoping this chiller makes a difference or I am going to have to separate the systems.
As to space more is always better. They need a deep tank more than a long tank. I believe the minimum recommended size is 30g unless you are going with the dwarf ponies. I have kept up to 3 in a 24g. This time I am going to limit myself to 2. When I had 3, 2 always stayed together and left the third out. They were all males so no breeding so far here. I felt bad for the guy that was left out.
Hopefully fairly soon I am getting a 55g tank for an upgraded pony tank and I will at least attempt to raise the fry in the 24g. Unless the temp becomes an issue again, I will put them all in one system. That's why I got the monster skimmer. I guess since I can't seem to get a big tank I am going to have lots of tanks strung together.

[sasquatch]

Deeper? why is depth important? this is starting to look like a deep subject lol

[lcstorc]

Most seahorses can get fairly large. I know the kudas I had were supposed to get up to 12 inches tall. So if you have say an 18inch depth plus a couple inches of sand the seahorse takes up all the tank. You don't need anything super deep, but you want to give them some room.

[sasquatch]

GET out of town!!!! 12 inches???? I thought they were only like 3 to 4 inches!! never seen anything that big, sheesh glad I asked, at full size a normal tank would be just cruel, how fast do they grow and whats the life span?

[bluespotjawfish]

Following along...Just in case someday I get good enough at this stuff.

[panmanmatt]

Growth rate depends alot on their diet and and waht stage they were trained to frozen foods. The earlier in their life they get on frozen the faster they grow. Also if they are getting a good diet of frozen mysis they will grow quicker than on a diet of enriched brine shrimp ( which should never be used as a dietary staple anyway).

Life span is still something new in the seahorse world as we are just starting to get good quantities of Cb horses available. There are reports of folks having the same horses for 5+ years already.
Seahorses like/need the vertical room for their mating thus the need for a tank that is at least 2x's their adult size in height.

As was already mentioned temp is a big issue. It is reccommended that even for tropical species, you keep the tank in the 72-74 degree range. This serves 2 purposes, it helps keep the bacterial levels at a lower rate and also allows for some moderate temperature spikes in the warmer months.

Minimum tank I would reccommend for 1 pair of the larger species is a 29 gallon.

[aquaman3680]

Seahorses need much more verticle room to swim rather than lateral. This is because they don't really go much from side to side but go from top to bottom. Plus they are longer than they are wide.

Matt