help

[dwtoddj]

i have a dwrf sea hors that has a big bally and swimms up side down and flots to the top of tink . my tink has been up and running for about 6 months and i hae had the sea horse for about 4 months i have a 20 gl tank nitrite r 0 . and nitrate r 0 . ph is 7.4 and ammonia r 0. i did a water chang about a week a go my tank sets at 79 degrees it is a captive bred that i got from reef topia .com. feedy it newly hatched brim shrimp.

[panmanmatt]

How many dwarfs do you have in the tank? That tank is large enough for 20-30 easily. Also Reeftopia only sells WC animals, they are a collector not a breeder.

Now to the issue at hand. Your temp is too high and your Ph is way too low. The low Ph could be leading to a build up of CO2 in the animal's tissue causing the floating. Ph should be 8.1-8.3 and temp should be around 74.

What type of filtration are you running?

What else is in the tank?

Is this horse male or female?

Can you please post a picture of the seahorse and your set up?

[dwtoddj]

sorry about the pic thar wrong trying to get the right pic on now sorry i cant get a pic on here i cant get it to the size of 50.0 i can only get it to 56.3

[panmanmatt]

Try hosting you pictures on a free photo website such as photobucket.com. From there you can copy and paste the image tags to a thread here.

[dwtoddj]

i have 4 dwrf sea horses and 3 sea horses that get up to 6 inches long thay r only about 3 inches now

[panmanmatt]

What are you feeding the bigger seahorses? A 20gallon tank is not big enough for those horses. The larger ones (Hippocampus erectus) need a minimum of a 29 gallon tank. And the dwarfs should be in their own set up of about 2 gallons for that few horses.

Sad to say but with the dwarfs as small as they are, treatments are very difficult at best and usually aren't effective in time.

[silverseahorse]

Are your large seahorses in with your dwarf seahorses?

[dwtoddj]

here r the pic

[dwtoddj]

yes the sea horses r togather and i have not had any problms thay have bee in the smae tank for about 6 weeks

[dwtoddj]

yes the sea horses r togather and have been for about 6 weeks

[panmanmatt]

Did you quarantine theses horses or treat them with anything when you first got them?

Unfortunately 6 weeks is about the time frame for new WC horses to start showing any symptoms or signs of trouble.

We really need to get that temperature and Ph issue addressed though.

[dwtoddj]

yes a frish water dip and then had in a 5 gl tank for a day and then took the time to get thme set up to put in to the 20 gl

[dwtoddj]

right now i just did a recheck on th ph and it shows i very light purplea very light hard to tell where it is on the ph card

[silverseahorse]

There are a few things that you need to do.

First - you must fix the pH. It needs to be between 8.0 and 8.3. If you cannot tell what colour it is on the card then I suggest you take a sample of water up to your local fish store and get them to test it for you. Either that or buy a new test kit. Ideally you would like to test with a pH probe, but that is expensive. A lfs test would be much cheaper.

Second - get the temperature down. 79F is too hot for even tropical seahorses. The temp needs to be around the 71-74F range as mentioned by Matt.

Third - Add an airstone to the tank. I won't go into the Chemistry of it, but this will help with the prevention of gas bubble disease (GBD) in seahorses. It might help with the current situation, but it will definately prevent.

Longer Term - you can't keep the dwarfs and the large seahorses together. The dwarves need to go into there own tank. A 10G would be good for them. The larger seahorses are going to need at least a 29G tank longer term.

Seahorses have special requirements and will need this to be done if they are to thrive in the long term.

[panmanmatt]

Do you have any updates? How are the horses doing?