# Seahorses



## E80 (Jul 25, 2010)

Has anyone ever kept seahorses? are they difficult to look after?


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## Eroom (Apr 5, 2011)

They are best kept on their own as they are a pain to feed if kept with other fish.
I had some for a couple of years and had to feed them with a pipette so they would eat.


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## E80 (Jul 25, 2010)

Eroom said:


> They are best kept on their own as they are a pain to feed if kept with other fish.
> I had some for a couple of years and had to feed them with a pipette so they would eat.


What size tank would 2 need?


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## Eroom (Apr 5, 2011)

Have a look on here for some of the problems and guides

SEAHORSE KEEPING


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## E80 (Jul 25, 2010)

Eroom said:


> Have a look on here for some of the problems and guides
> 
> SEAHORSE KEEPING


Thank you


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## owlbassboy (Jun 26, 2008)

lets just use hippocampus reidi as an example as they are the most commonly kept. 

you should aim for a tank of at least 24" tall.

you need to be careful of any coral choices as they could sting the ponies. stuff like mushrooms and palys would be fine though.

other inhabitants can include pipefish and dragonets. ponies eat slowly so most fish like clowns and gobies will out compete them for food.

you need to keep the flow pretty low for them.

you need to be very careful with the live rock. many people recommend using fake live rock as pest crabs and worms could easily kill a pony. but i know many others that have had no trouble with live rock.

they also need regular feeding throughout the day.

hope that helps a bit and any questions just drop me a message and ill try my best to help


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## Moogloo (Mar 15, 2010)

To be honest, if people come in asking me for seahorses, i tell them no...

No one ever does research first these days *sigh*

you HAVE to be home long enough to be able to feed between 4 and 8 times a day, 2-4 hours apart. Most will ONLY take livefood, the ones that get on to frozen food often dont do so well because the frozen food is such poor quality these days that such a sensitive creature wont tolerate it.

Sea horses dont have a stomach as such, its all intestines and it has to be kept working or it dies off so constant food is compulsory.

No corals other than maybe mushrooms and zoas as the seahorses cling to corals which can kill the corals of sting the seahorses!

As other poster said, pipe fish and dragonets like Mandarins, Scooter Blennies and suchlike make companions (though they all have similar requirements to seahorses and will only make it harder to keep as they will compete with your sea horsies!).

Most seahorses actually get pretty large! They want really low flow (meaning you will be almost guaranteed to get Cyanobacteria because the only way to keep it down is high flow... which you cant do...

So many variables....

that and seahorses start at about £80-£100 each!

Edit: (I have kept Reidiis in a shop situation for a year and were happily feeding on frozen but had all kinds of hard work and problems with them!)

My favourite species ever and my 'ultimate tank goal' is going to be a seahorse set up.... but with 3-4 years being chucked in the deep end of the business, i wouldnt dare get seahorses yet.

Average lifespan of customers seahorses is a shamefull 12-14 months of the few i sold...


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## owlbassboy (Jun 26, 2008)

just out of curiosity do you know what the lifespan should be for them?


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## Moogloo (Mar 15, 2010)

5-6 years give or take!


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## colour_freak (Jan 18, 2008)

After going to plymouth aquarium and seeing how they keep theirs and the water systems they have set up i'd say they look really hard to own. Never worth the risk of putting such an amazing animals life at risk unless your dead certain you know what your doing imo. :whistling2:


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## CalE (Apr 24, 2010)

a sea horse would be so rad:2thumb:


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## E80 (Jul 25, 2010)

colour_freak said:


> After going to plymouth aquarium and seeing how they keep theirs and the water systems they have set up i'd say they look really hard to own. Never worth the risk of putting such an amazing animals life at risk unless your dead certain you know what your doing imo. :whistling2:


Yes they looks very fragile and seem hard to care for.


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## Moogloo (Mar 15, 2010)

I want to scream "nooooo you dont want seahorses" at every idiot that mentions them (you wouldnt believe how regularly!!

But its like daft kids wanting 'a big poisonous boa constrictor'... you want to bash your head on the wall, deck the idiot asking and all his mates and then run screaming over the hills and far away!!

I would love to keep seahorses and know how i would do it! I just not in a situation to do it as i am with my parents again temporarily and it wont be cheap.

Biggest plan would be to set up lots of Artemia/Brineshrimp/Sea Monkey hatcheries. Cost you about £50 from a shop....

Alternatively..... upside down large cola bottle with base cut off, filled with water with 1-2 tablets of dishwasher salt added. Add Artemia eggs got cheap online, air pump and airstone for water movement on a window sil and an airline tap at the bottom to drain it... you can culture thousands in 3 days!!

It can be done... its just you have to be willing to work your ass off and dedicate a lot of time to it and pay out to make the tank suitable!!


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## owlbassboy (Jun 26, 2008)

not everyone that wants to keep seahorses is a idiot.

they are difficult to keep yes but you are making it sound like mission impossible here lol

beginners can keep them as long as they research them which is clearly why this thread was started


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## Devi (Jan 9, 2011)

Why not consider some dwarfs? Smaller, cheaper, and cuter imo. Here's a caresheet -
Dwarf Seahorse guide.

If you buy any horse make sure it is feeding on frozen in the shop before you buy it. Captive bred are much better than wild caught for a number of reasons. Most care sheets suggest twice daily feedings are adequate as long as you are feeding a suitably nutritious food, but obviously the more often you can manage the better.
If you like the bigger ones then these people are having a 2 for £100 deal on hippocampus - Aquatics to your door


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## E80 (Jul 25, 2010)

Devi said:


> Why not consider some dwarfs? Smaller, cheaper, and cuter imo. Here's a caresheet -
> Dwarf Seahorse guide.
> 
> If you buy any horse make sure it is feeding on frozen in the shop before you buy it. Captive bred are much better than wild caught for a number of reasons. Most care sheets suggest twice daily feedings are adequate as long as you are feeding a suitably nutritious food, but obviously the more often you can manage the better.
> If you like the bigger ones then these people are having a 2 for £100 deal on hippocampus - Aquatics to your door


Cheers 

Do they live longer than normal seahorses?


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## Devi (Jan 9, 2011)

E80 said:


> Cheers
> 
> Do they live longer than normal seahorses?


18 months roughly but fairly easy to breed, so you could try that?


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## owlbassboy (Jun 26, 2008)

its not that they are easy to breed its more that you cant stop them breeding and the good thing with the zoestrae is that the babies can eat the same foods as their parents so they are easy to raise too


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## mat_worrell (Sep 20, 2009)

Have kept these in a shop situation and personally at home. A misconception is that they need tall tanks, they dont. They actually explore allot and need the room to do so. 

As has been said they are difficult to keep but with the right care and armed with the right research first they are not impossible to keep.


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## brittone05 (Sep 29, 2006)

i hope they aren't impossible to keep as that would put all of my research right out of the window 

I have just set up a 24x24x40 tall tank for horses eventually. currently stocking rock, red bubble caulerpa, caulerpa of various types, devils finger coral, some amazing radioactive palys, few mushies, rics etc 

Been cycling for near 3 weeks now so hopig to add the gg's over the coming week.

And Reidi seahorses are generally around £50 each same as Kuda - or at last everywhere I have looked they are


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## E80 (Jul 25, 2010)

Think I'll practice with the water for a while first


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## matthew_harwood (Mar 12, 2005)

Moogloo said:


> To be honest, if people come in asking me for seahorses, i tell them no...
> 
> No one ever does research first these days *sigh*
> 
> ...



In the above the writing I have put in red is actually not correct in my opinion, I used to Breed and raise seahorses and did it successfully for over 5 year with no issues I stopped when the seahorses went on Cites and the prices rocketed up (and I went through a messy split with an ex). Some of the seahorses I have kept bred and raised are Reidi, knysna seahorse (I was lucky to get 2 breeding pair from chester zoo), zosterae, Fuscus, histrix and a few others as well. 
While keeping my first pair I started to question what the so called experts were saying about feeding seahorses and I've always been scientifically minded so investigated myself looking into the habitats and pray etc. My conclusion people are killing their seahorses with kindness, the seahorses starve due to over feeding.
Its simple if you think about it logically seahorses feed on shrimp etc that have hard exoskeletons they do not have a stomach and only have a short digestive tract.
They have been round for a very long time so either they are very lucky to have survived this long or scientists have messed up again with their diagnosis. Bees cant fly my ar*e lol
Ok this is what I think seahorses have a very efficient digestive track which is perfect for the lifestyle they have and the prey they feed on, in the wild a seahorse will sit in one place waiting for pray to come to it, not the other way round. This could take hours so when a seahorse does feed it needs to digest all of the pray matter, the seahorse digests all of the pray including exoskeleton this will take time so the seahorse does not need to feed constantly. 
However if the seahorse feeds constantly or to much the undigested food is excreted this results in the seahorse using energy to digest food but not getting the energy back as it is removed from the process by more food pushing it out, this can easily be seen if you have tried to raise baby seahorses to much brimeshrimp and the seahorses feed to much resulting in live brimeshrimp being pooped out not good as they end up starving due to never being able to digest the food.
I know my theory is sound as I kept all of my seahorses on 2 feeds a day and not alot of food yet they all bulged out of their plates and were all healthy breeding and producing large batches of babies with they just would not be able to do if they were not healthy.
while I agree people should look into the care for their animals they should also question what people say and not take it as gospel as often it just is not the best way to look after or breed your animal.


regards


matt


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## brittone05 (Sep 29, 2006)

Amen!!


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## matthew_harwood (Mar 12, 2005)

colour_freak said:


> After going to plymouth aquarium and seeing how they keep theirs and the water systems they have set up i'd say they look really hard to own. Never worth the risk of putting such an amazing animals life at risk unless your dead certain you know what your doing imo. :whistling2:


Seahorses are very easy to keep they are just a fish and are actually tough as old boots, as long as you get ones that feed on frozen food, but most can be weened onto frozen with a bit of work. all you need is a tank full of macro and micro algies and your away. the more you have in the tank the better the water quality, a 10% water change once a week.

here is a pic of one of my capensis










regards

matt


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## matthew_harwood (Mar 12, 2005)

heres a few more gutted when i had to get rid.










Tiger tail



















babies


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