Feeding Time!

[revhtree]

Beautiful horses!!

 

[Goby-won]

Oh my!!!! That is a beautiful tank. I always wanted to try seahorses, but I thought the flow in my tank (for SPS) would totally push them in a corner where it wasn't good for either of us. That gives me encouragement to try this. Based on your comments, I would say by adding some alternative hitching posts would help my success.

Thanks for showing your reef off!

 

[tjdouglas]

Beautiful horses!!

Thank you so much!

 

[tjdouglas]

Oh my!!!! That is a beautiful tank. I always wanted to try seahorses, but I thought the flow in my tank (for SPS) would totally push them in a corner where it wasn't good for either of us. That gives me encouragement to try this. Based on your comments, I would say by adding some alternative hitching posts would help my success.

Thanks for showing your reef off!

Giving them a number of hitching posts can be very helpful. But allow me to also suggest the use several smaller powerheads to keep up the flow in your reef tank rather than relying on a couple of large powerheads. I find this really helps to keep both the coral and the seahorses happy.

 

[Devaji]

holy cow, love this thank! what size is it? is that a clown tang in there? hows it with the SH?

 

[tjdouglas]

holy cow, love this thank! what size is it? is that a clown tang in there? hows it with the SH?

Hi Devaji......thanks so much for the kind words! The tank is 110 gallons (30" tall tank). Yes, that is a clown tang in there. I got him when he was just a little guy. I have him in there for algae control (to keep algae off the coral, etc). He is fine so far with the seahorses. I feed him some flake food before I put in the mysis to feed the seahorses, so his appetite is mildly reduced when the seahorses start feeding. Plus, he seems to be slightly afraid of the seahorses. But eventually he will get too big for the tank and I will move him to another system.

 

[powpow]

Love this post. I had seahorses years ago and was getting feedback that my SPS corals were hurting my seahorses. I had gorgonians and other things in the tank for them to hitch onto, but the SPS corals were by far their favorites. I ended up selling the seahorses as I was concerned they were getting stung. The back of my head I kept thinking if they were getting stung, why would they attach to SPS when there were so many other options, and why were there no marks on the seahorse tail to suggest irritation from the SPS. Are seahorses getting stung by SPS???

 

[rayjay]

Anything that stings them, be it corals (not just sps) or anemones will eventually lead to wounds that get infected with nasty bacteria like the vibrio types, ESPECIALLY in temperatures above 74°F that most reef tanks are kept at to satisfy the coral needs.
As to WHY they don't avoid things that sting, I don't really know. It may be that they don't have "nerves" that sense the stinging and once the bacteria infect the wound they have no correlative memory to associate the two stages.
Soon after I started seahorse keeping 18 yrs ago, I transferred some mushrooms to the seahorse tank and found out the hard way that even some mushrooms sting seahorses.
Anecdotally, over the years reading on seahorse.org of people keeping seahorses in reef type situations, there were MANY posts advising that some sps don't fare well with seahorses because the seahorses with their rudimentary digestive tracts, and their process of masticating the food as they snick it up, passing the micro particulate matter out through their gills and into the water column, create "dirty" water that some sps can't tolerated. And that's in addition to the temp issue.