• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

Seahorses

Would love to have at least one, but have questions. First, would my 15g be big enough to hold one (would the current be strong enough or does it matter?) and why are they so darn expensive??? :-\
 

panmanmatt

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Seahorses are social animals and do best in pairs or groups. 15 gallon is too small, minimum tank size is 29 gallons for 1 pair. You want a moderate flow but not enough to blow them against the glass. What do you consider expensive?
 
OK, I'll let him get if if you help us find a bugger place to live, how's that, Mike...instigator :p?

And by expensive, well, I've only seen them at Absolutely Fish (who I am told are pricey to start with) and they started at like $80. I wouldn't mind paying that much, but their sizes ranged from tiny to huge and I would rather get a medium sized one for that kind of money.
 
I meant bigger...this place is already a bugger to live in with all this FISH STUFF!!! And why can't you edit posts once they are posted....really annoying. (Maybe I should mention that I am a web designer and if I knew more about fish I could probably mod here...)
 

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
But they can't be kept in your reef. The temps are too high, so you'd need a separate tank for them. As for your ability to modify your posts... that's restricted to NJRC paid members.
 
Seahorses are cute and all, but there's just so much effort involved with keeping them. They almost have to be kept by themselves, so you need time/room for a separate "seahorse" tank. They frequently won't eat anything but live foods. You either have to farm brine shrimp, or like some of the club members, live close enough to the shore to scavenge small grass shrimps to feed them. Just getting healthy ones to begin with can be a challenge. Their expensive because they frequently don't survive the trip from capture to wholesaler to dealer to you-the unfortunate soul who just shelled out a bunch of money for an animal that seems determined to starve to death in your tank.
 

panmanmatt

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
chaoscat said:
Seahorses are cute and all, but there's just so much effort involved with keeping them. They almost have to be kept by themselves, so you need time/room for a separate "seahorse" tank. They frequently won't eat anything but live foods. You either have to farm brine shrimp, or like some of the club members, live close enough to the shore to scavenge small grass shrimps to feed them. Just getting healthy ones to begin with can be a challenge. Their expensive because they frequently don't survive the trip from capture to wholesaler to dealer to you-the unfortunate soul who just shelled out a bunch of money for an animal that seems determined to starve to death in your tank.

Sorry to say but some of your info is so far out of date. Yes they need a separate system and have special needs but so do SPS corals.

As for their feeding habits, well with the large influx of captive bred seahorses in the last few years this is not an issue. All the seahorses that are truly captive bred ( I am not talking about those "tank raised" ones you see at the LFS) are trained and raised on frozen foods. Their main diet is frozen mysis shrimp. Brine shrimp should NEVER be used as the main diet for juvenile or adult seahorses.

As for their pricing, actually the ones that are wild collected are the cheapest to purchase and always have been. The reason you pay more for a captive bred seahorse is because of the time and expense of raising them. They guys collecting the seahorses are selling them to the wholesalers for $2-3, the exporters mark them up for the importers, who in turn mark them up for the wholesalers and so forth until it get's to the customer. That is the reason they cost what they do. Buying captive bred you either buy direct from the breeder or the only mark up is breeder to LFS with the occasional wholesaler thrown in the mix.
 
Top