I need to know everything!

[caitrina]

Well, I have been thinking about a nano for awhile now and thinking about what to put in it and I have come up with ponies. Now I need to know everything there is to know about these little guys.

I know about water temp, know they can be difficult to keep, know about the water changes, but what else can I put in with these little guys, if I choose to do so. I doubt I would want other fish in the tank, but coral wise?

Also what type of substrate? Live sand? LR, how much? What size nano would be good for them? Water flow? Live plants? What type of food on a daily basis? I read about their diet, but want all this in one convenient place. Daily/weekly water additives, like calcium, iodine, etc? Lighting? Placement of tank? Anything I need to know!

This right now is just a thought which will become reality, but first there are some things I need to take care of. After that then I can begin.

[rpawluk]

Substrate wise id go with sand or a small grain crushed coral. Live rock is usually 1.5-2 lbs per gallon of total water volume in the tank. I think one of the best size nano tanks out is the 24 gallon. it's self contained and all you need to do is maintain filters, water and change the lights. Live plants you caould just throw some Macro algea in one of the filtration compartments. Food, i use spectrum because its small and occasionally thaw and rinse some mysis shrimp for my fish. if you're gonna have sps (hard corals) i suggest you dose 2 part additive calcium and alk, about once a week and test every other day. place the tank away from direct sun light so you dont get algae blooms from the sun light.

[lcstorc]

Unless you are going with dwarf ponies I would go no smaller than a 24 and if you go that small no more than 4 ponies. Two would be better.
They like low flow and lots of things to hitch on. You can put live plants in the aquarium for them to hitch on or long limbed corals like gorgonians. That is most of what I have in the pony tank.
You want the normal level of LR to preform the denitrification and a skimmer would be great.
Be sure you get captive bred seahorses as they will already eat frozen mysis. Wild ones will only eat live food at the beginning and you have to slowly try to convert them and it may or may not work.
Also they need to eat several times a day and they eat very slowly. You can try a feeding station but I never got that to work. I would put a couple of mysis in and whatch them eat them and continue until their eating slows down. Generally people recommend feeding 3 times a day but I did twice and mine were fine with that.
Because of the slow way they eat you end up with a lot of wasted food and you need to adjust your maintenance appropriately or your levels go off quickly. You can keep snails and shrimp fine but I wouldn't keep crabs.
You could keep any coral that doesn't sting and I would definitely not put an anmeone in the tank.
Finally don't underestimate the need to keep the tank temp down. The higher temps allow bacteria to grow and infect the seahorses. I believe this is the cause of my ponies demise. I won't be getting them again unless I can find a way to keep the tank between 72 and 76.
That is all I can think of at the moment.
Also you probably want to check out seahorse.org. It is a site specifically for seahorses and there are a number of FAQ sheets and a forum all about seahorses.