Neptune Aquatics

Updated 125G Seahorse/Soft Coral Tank

Its good to see you back posting. Sorry again about the crash, but I'm glad to hear you're recovered. How did I miss that you have seahorses?! They are H. Erectus correct? How many do you have total (I believe I saw 4 in the video)? They look nice and healthy and much bigger than my little females. Where did you get yours from? Are they captive bred and what do you feed them?
 
Yes, I have 4 H. Erectus. The largest one (a male) is from Seahorse.com in Hawaii (from Pete G.). He is almost 3 years old. The other three (two females and a male) are from seahorsesource.com in Florida (from Abbie). I just got them at the end of August. They all seem to be doing great. The Hawaiian seahorse is more colorful (yellow to redish brown, depending on his mood and the lights and the color of stuff in the tank). The seahorsesource seahorses are gray to black, and the females have the horns, and they much more active and great at eating from the water column even though I have pretty good flow in the back of my reef tank (the front is mellower flow). They seem to be doing great despite some "level-3" tank mates (an A. Ocellaris pair) and two skunk cleaners (which I have told can stress out seahorse because they are aggressive in their desire to clean the seahorses).
 
Thanks for the info and the feeding video. I like that ATB feeder. My original plan was to do a feeding station with mine but I've ended up using tweezers to hand feed each of my seahorses. It seems like you have everything in your setup balanced just right for them. I've got quite a bit of flow as well and mine handle it just fine. Do you have any problems with the skunk cleaner shrimp stealing their food? My skunk cleaners in my mixed reef tank go crazy over food, so I worried that if I had one with the seahorses it would just constantly snatch their food.
 
I put in flake food for the clowns on the right side of the tank. I overfeed a little, so the skunk cleaners and the other fish tend to come over to the right side. I then feed the seahorses through their feeder on the left side. The feed is very high in the water column so it's work for the skunk to get up there. This seems to keep them out of it. Sometimes (as you can see in the video) the yellow-headed sleep goby comes in and grabs a bite, so I usually feed a exta mysids, so the seahorses get plenty. I watch their abdomens to make sure they are getting enough/not too much food.

Also, sometimes I just feed in the water column. The Floridians do fine this way, but the Hawaiian does not seem to eat enough from the column.

And once a week (or every other week) I get 1oz of live adult brine shrimp and enrich these this Selcon. This is enough for a couple of live feedings a week.

While this overfeeding approach seems to be working ok (nitrates and phosphates are 0), the tank is 125G and only has 4 seahorses, 2 clowns, a yellow-headed sleeper, and a single dart fish. Then I have the skunks as part of the CUC.
 
Thank you for explaining in so much detail! Its nice to hear how someone else handles feeding. It seems like you have a very good feeding method for your tank. Unfortunately with 3 seahorses in my 30 gallon cube, I can't overfeed very much and still keep decent water quality. What works best for me is to hand feed each seahorse with tweezers so I only feed exactly as much as they need. I also do twice a week water changes.

What is your process for enriching the live brine shrimp with Selcon? I occasionally get some as a treat for my seahorses and I've been using them as the primary food when one of my friends is babysitting the tank since its easier to just throw in a netful of live shrimp than having to hand feed each seahorse.
 
I add 1ml of Selcon to their 2L container and wait 3 hours. Other have said to wait 12 hours, but Abbie at Seahorsesource.com said that they fill their gut within 2-4 hours and after 12 hours they metabolize a lot of what is in their gut so it is better to not wait so long.
 
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