75 Gallon Seahorse-Centric Tank and 32 Gallon Reef Tank

[A_Tired_Shark]

Hi guys, I'm a lurker on R2R that decided it was time to start posting about my tanks to gain more insight into this new hobby that my fiancé and I fell in love with. I apologize in advance for the long read.

We started this adventure at the end of December last year after Christmas. Kind of on a whim but we didn't go into it blindly. We searched for the best LFS in town and spoke with them extensively on starting a saltwater tank as well as did our own research online. Lo and behold we bought a 32 gallon Biocube and started this very interesting and confusing reef tank journey. At the very beginning we had 1 hippocampus erectus seahorse, 2 Banggai cardinalfish, and 2 ruby dragonettes. The next couple of months we bought fish and lost fish, experienced oxygen shortage that killed half the tank, aggression issues and lots of swim bladder disease.
Miraculously, out of everyone, the lone seahorse survived all of our blunders and we had decided to buy him more siblings. So, we came home with 3 Tigertail seahorses. Thus spurred us to buy a second larger tank, the 75 gallon, for our seahorse babies around 3 months ago. We wanted to make the 75 gallon a seahorse-centric reef tank, and stocked it with reef safe, docile fish to accompany our seahorses along with coral. We were just about ready to sell the Biocube when we realized that the coast to coast light we had over the 75 was not good enough to support our coral. Which made us re-start the Biocube with water from the 75 and turned it into a tank to grow our corals in. This is where we are now.

As I said I wanted the 75 gallon to be a seahorse-centric reef tank. For the rock I wanted one portion to be set up for the seahorses to relax/hitch easily and one portion for the fish to have caves and arches to dwell in. In the video you can see that the left side of the tank is more for other fish while the right is set up as a seahorse lagoon with a secluded area and finger gorgonians. For my next step in building up this tank, I want to buy an AI Hydra 64 light for this tank so that I can support coral and macro algae for the seahorses. Along with another 110 Tidal filter system.

What is in the 75 Gallon as of now:

• 4 Red Firefish
• 4 Banggai Cardinalfish
• 4 Seahorses - 1 Hippocampus Erectus and 3 Tigertails
• 4 Clownfish - 2 orange and 2 black
• 1 5-Bar Mystery Wrasse
• 3 Conches
• 1 Horseshoe Crab
• 1 Sand Shifting Starfish
• Waaaaay to many blue and red legged crabs to count
• 2 Porcelain Crabs

What equipment do I currently have?:

• 1 - 110 Tidal Filtration System
• 1 large small hole air stone attached to a 110 air pump
• 1 Xstream nano wave maker

This is currently how our 32 gallon Biocube looks. We've been growing our coral frag in here for about a month and have already seen great progress compared to when they were in the 75 gallon.

What is in the Biocube as of now:

• 4 mushrooms - 1 green, 1 orange/yellow, 2 red
• 1 purple/pink hammerhead coral
• 1 dark purple and green frogspawn
• 1 frag of Utter Chaos Zoas
• 2 multi-colony zoa clusters
• 1 frag of Eagle Eye zoas
• 1 frag of Bob Marley zoas
• Hot pink gonies
• 1 frag of designer zoas - thinking they're fairy glitters
• 4 anemones - 1 rose bubbletip, 1 black widow bubbletip, 1 regular black widow, 1 green bubbletip
• 1 rock anemone - pink and yellow
• 2 clove polyps - 1 Firework and 1 Candycorn
• 1 red Reef Angler Fish
• 1 Green Filefish

What equipment do I currently have?:

• 1 large small hole air stone attached to the same 110 air pump as 75 gallon

I will try to keep everyone updated as much as possible since this hobby is everchanging for us. Once we move into a house (at some point) I would love to upgrade into a larger tank, like a 125+ gallon. I would love any and all feedback. I know that I have rushed my tank at some points and made some bad mistakes like getting tangs too early and not catching fish aggression sooner. I now have had this steady group of fish for over a month and felt confident enough to post my story.

 

[bluemon]

How are the seahorses holding up in the 75 Gal with the clownfish, wrasse and the crabs?

I think 75 gallons should be big enough for the other inhabitants to not bother the seahorses too much, but still worries me that the horses are in there with those tankmates. (especially the horseshoe)

 

[A_Tired_Shark]

How are the seahorses holding up in the 75 Gal with the clownfish, wrasse and the crabs?

I think 75 gallons should be big enough for the other inhabitants to not bother the seahorses too much, but still worries me that the horses are in there with those tankmates. (especially the horseshoe)

The three tigertails love having other tank mates, the hippocampus not so much but he keeps to himself anyways. They're constantly trying to hitch onto others and play with them. Even feedings are not a problem, as I target feed the seahorses. I just have to shoot some food in the opposite direction first to distract the clowns and cardinals. They're such pigs! The mystery wrasse is very docile and doesn't bother anyone. I also had a Possum Wrasse with the seahorses and that wrasse loved swimming with them. The horseshoe crab is pretty much ignored by everyone and sleeps under the sand a lot. And even in such a big tank everyone mostly keeps in a large group on one side of the tank or the other. I try to stay wary of crabs so I only have blue and red legged crabs and porcelain crabs because they are not carnivorous or opportunistic feeders.

 

[BanZI29]

OK found your build thread. so Questions for you:
1. Do you need a skimmer?
2. Water changes?
3. will they get along with garden eels?
4. Anything needed that is not used on a reef tank?
5. how should the rockwork be setup? do they need hiding spots?
I am sure I will think of more questions but this is it for now.

 

[A_Tired_Shark]

OK found your build thread. so Questions for you:
1. Do you need a skimmer?
2. Water changes?
3. will they get along with garden eels?
4. Anything needed that is not used on a reef tank?
5. how should the rockwork be setup? do they need hiding spots?
I am sure I will think of more questions but this is it for now.

I will answer all of the questions you got, so don't worry!

1.) The Tidal 110 that I have on the back of the 75 has a skimmer function in it. As you can see in the video there is still on stuff on top, so I plan on adding another 110 to help. You can also get a skimmer that clips onto the back of the tank, I believe Reef Octopus makes a clip on protein skimmer. That'll work great too!

2.) I do water changes I say every 3 weeks - ish? I used to do a lot of them (usually every two weeks) when I started out to try and get my levels down to the perfect level. I found that I was easier to add creatures that filter feed and clean my sand/walls every week to help with the levels rather than do a water change. So I think I do it every 3 to 4 weeks and I'll go through and scrap the walls, deep clean the sand and scrub my rocks. During this time I also clean and change the charcoal and matrix rocks. Small maintenance, i.e. light sand cleaning and wall cleaning, is done at the end of each week and I'll run the uv sterilizer afterwards. This helps with keeping everything down so I only have to do the water change/deep cleaning once a month. Hope that makes sense.

3.) I've been told by my LFS (Fintastic) that they will get along great. Garden eels just need an ample amount of sand and since my tank was already established I didn't want to go through and add an extra inch or two of sand.

4.) Everything in my 75 gallon I would also use in a reef tank. I have plans to buy some awesome AI lights so that I can have coral gardens and macro algae in there, so everything in there is also helpful for growing/maintaining coral.

5.) Rockscaping is the reefers personal preference I believe. None of my rock is glued or bound together, it's just stacked to where it clicks into place. I do it this way because I love using the live rock so I don't want to risk killing it by leaving it out to glue together. This also leaves me the ability to move it around if I need to, which I have done multiple times due to circumstances. Generally if you have other fish with your seahorses they will need caves and hiding holes, I have 2 caves to prevent territorial fighting. Cleaning shrimps love ledges and cliffs to hide under. Seahorses will hitch on anything so I suggest lots of gorgonians. If you get the live rock from Fintastic it has holes in it!