ChrisS

Have you considered turning one or both of these tanks into a planted tank? Or at least adding macroalgea to the display tank? It seems to me that this might be a good solution to the skimmer problem you have with these tanks. I've run my seahorse tank skimmer free for 3+ years now and the nitrates are always very low and usually undetectable because of all the macroalgea I have. I've been collecting macros for awhile now and have a nice collection of interesting and colorful macros. I would be more than happy to give you a nice collection of them such as my blue ball, red feather, red grape, titan, codium, dragon's tongue, neomeris etc. I'm just a few mile away in Annandale and could drop the macro by whenever is good for you. With a low light/high nutrient tank with no option for a sump and limited skimmer options I think a mixed softie/planted tank would be a great choice. I think a well done macro tank could be just as pretty and interesting for the kids to watch. I usually get more comments and interest from friends and visitors on my planted tank than my more traditional reef tank. If you do decide to connect them via the u-tubes I have and old overflow box with a brand new u-tube that you can have. Making one a planted tank and the other a reef tank would be really interesting IMHO and the planted tank could act as a nice biological filter for the second tank.

Have you considered doing it with macroalgae instead of coral? It grows a lot faster so you could actually have some decent growth in 2-3 weeks. I have some dragon's tongue I can visually see the growth from day to day. I can give you some it you want. Of there are lots of people who could likely give you some fast growing cheato or caulerpa. You could get some 10g tanks pretty cheap and some different lights. Or just get one long (48" or 36") light and lay it across all the tanks lined up side by side. That way they're all getting the exact same light. Buy a bottle of seachem flourish and dose each tank different amounts. You could put a small powerhead in each tank or even easier just get one air pump and run some tubbing into each tank. That would be enough water movement for macros. I bet if you asked here you could find members willing to lend you the tanks, lights, and such. So all you'd have to buy is a bottle of flourish. The experiment could be really easy. Get the tanks set up. Get some macro. Borrow a scale. Blot dry the macro and weight the same size portion for each tank. Dose some different levels of flourish in each tank. Repeat doses once or twice a week. At the end take out the macro, dry it off, weight it, and see the difference in growth.

Welcome. I usually takes a few days for the treasurer to get your payment and change your settings so you can see the member areas.

The seahorse found in MD is classified as H. erectus. Erectus are also found in FL, keys and south. The seahorses for all of the eastern US is classified as the same species. However they are quite different in appearance, behavior, and characteristic of the fry. For example the southern erectus have larger fry that hitch from birth. The northern erectus have smaller fry that are pelagic for the 1st 3-5 weeks. There is some belief that these might not be the same species but for now they're still classified that way but distinguished as a northern and southern subspecies. Most erectus sold in the trade are the southern erectus. There are however a few places that do breed and sell the northern erectus. Anyway here are some pics of mine. Here they are in thier mating/display colors. The female mimicking the rock. This pic is right after I 1st got them. The male is very skinny/starving in this pic. He's still skinny one month later not quite this bad and is fattening up some. If I could just get them to switch to frozen mysis it would help a lot...but I'm still working on that.

Hope he does well for doug. If I had seen this earlier I would have taken him for you. I have a pair of WC eretus from the bay in a qt tank right now. And as of this morning about 100 or so babies. FYI the N. eretus fry seem to do best with copepods as a 1st food. I'm going to try this batch with rots. They can also take the small stain bbs right away but don't seem to do as well on those...nutritional issues I assume. These were also caught on crab pots. I know a prof. fisherman who gets lots of these guys on his pots. They're actually pretty common. They usually show up more in the fall but for some reason this summer he has been catching them in record numbers. The northern erectus do better in cooler waters. I've got the QT tank at 68 right now. I'll slowly raise it to about 72-74 as that is where I can keep my main tank stable at without a chiller.

I've seen it most commonly called blue ball or blue Ochtodes. It looks like this.

I have one of the 12 LED strips from that ebay seller, this one. I originally thought I might use it for moonlighting but it was much brighter than I expected...too bright for moonlights in my small tank. I ended up using it to supplement blue light for the 10k PCs I had on the tank. It did a nice job of that and adding a bit of glimmer for the 10g nano. I've got it laying around not in use right now...though I may put it on the 20G nano if I ever get that up and running. In the mean time you're welcome to borrow it if you want to see how something similar would look in your tank.

Hey I just saw this..sweet tank. I noticed you're looking for some strawberry anemones. I have quite a few that appeared as hitchhikers on some macro in my seahorse tank. It's not exactly a cold water tank but is it kept cooler than norm...around 74 and these guys have taken off. I recently was cleaning out some of my macro and wanted to save these so I fragged them out off the macro and now have them all one one rock...well most of them. I have various others hiding throughout the rock work in my tank. I could be convinced to part with some of them. I was actually worried that they might not be such a good idea with the seahorses but then I read somewhere that their sting is actually really weak so I haven't worried about it as much. Anyway if you're still looking for them drop me a pm...I'd be happy to trade you a few.

Count me in.

OK, I knew the free corals would get all your attentions! Now who wants to help me win them! If I do win I'd likely SWAP some of these and really who doesn't want some lovely new corals making the rounds of WAMAS! Even more important everyone should check out this new site www.marineplantedtanks.com. Its a new site dedicated to...you guessed it marine planted tanks. Looks like it has a lot of potential. Since I love planted tank...they just seem a natural with my seahorses I'd love to see this site take off. It a bit discouraging to those of us who like marine algae when 99.9% of what is posted about them on most sites is "How do I I get rid of this?" questions. Anyway, Sam (bluenassarius), the founder of the site is trying to get the word out and part of that is a contest where the person with the most referrals wins this great frag pack. So go check it out, sign up, list me (ChrisS) as the person the referred you, and win me some great frags already!

Actually acid rain is mainly sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides. Then there's the heavy metals floating around in the air...and the VOCs although they may not hydrolize...and the chlorinated haydrocarbons..and the...well I can go on but you get the idea. Some are from industry but a great many are from our cars...most of them you don't want in your tank. Ever noticed how grey and soot covered cars, buses, buildings, everything in the city gets? or seen what comes out the stack of a metrobus? Rain will wash most of that out of the atmosphere and into the water. Even if you buffered it to stabalize the pH and off gassed the sulfer you still have all the metals and possible other crap to deal with. Rain water around here is pretty disgusting I wouldn't use it for my tank.

I love mine...one of my fav corals. Mine has done extremely well, but then I do feed it pretty much every day. Its in my seahorse tank so when I'm feeding the horses I squirt a few mysids it's way. I've had this for just about a year now. It was one small dime-sized head when I got it. now it's has 6 large quarter sized heads and another 3 dime sized heads and 4-5 tiny little heads forming. I'll post some pics this weekend if you want.

You'll want to bring the salinity back up very slowly. I'd do 10% water changes over several weeks each time just bringing up the salinity a point or two. Also be careful when treating with FWE. The dieing flatworms will release a lot of toxin so you need to be prepared to siphon out as many as you can and do some large water changes. The fish and corals will be stressed from this so I wouldn't make any other changes until after they've had time to recover. There are several post on here and on reef central about FWE I'd so a search and read up on it if you haven't already. Some people even suggest moving fish to a QT while treating.

You got me and treesprite right anyway. I'm in no big hurry. We can try to work out an exchange at the next social. Chris

Anyone need a few more hermit crabs. I have 5 blue-legged I can part with. I'd love to trade them for snails of any sort.

Hi Shawn. You'll want to be carefull about feeding the 3G. In a tank that small water quality can go south fast. I'd put some zoas in there maybe a few small muchrooms or rics. Think about things that will stay small and not outgrow your tank too quickly. As for selling corals I suggest you join WAMAS. It'll be the best $25 you spend in this hobby. As a member you get access to the selling forum. You'll find lots of nice corals there way below retail pricing. Also lots of folks sell and trade corals at the meeting. (Our fall meeting is coming up in Oct) You'll also find members will often give away an easy frag or two to help someone new start their tank. Chris

Pitch it. Even small amounts of copper will kill inverts and the rock will leach copper back into the water. If you have a QT system that you keep running you could just leave the rock in there. Make it a dedicated QT rock.

I'll be around most of the day Sat. I'll call and set up a time.

Hey Bob, I live less than a mile from you so it'd be easy for me to stop by and check up on your tank while you're out of town. I'm going to be out of town for a long weekend on Oct 5-7 and will need someone to who can feed my seahorses while I'm gone. Interested in swaping some tank sitting? Even if you can't help out with my seahorses I'd be happy to look in on your tank. Chris

I think they used LED lights for this mod. You can buy small submersible ones made to go in beta bowls from some of the LFS or you can find larger ones by doing an ebay search. I actually have a set of blue ones that I use as a moonlight that I bought off ebay seller MeasureExplorer and have been happy with. I also think I read somewhere that someone used the rope of lights they sell as outdoor xmas lights and just coiled them around inside the canister.

The generaly opinion in the seahorse community of those net-raised kuda is that they are doomed from the getgo. There has been alot of discussion about them on seahorse.org and it seems that no one can keep them alive for more than a few months. As you found out they're not really captive-breed. They're breed and raised in pens in the ocean (which makes them even worse than wild-caught in terms of thier rates of disease and parasites). Too many horses in close quaters sharing all their diseases. These horses also seem to be generally malnourished and stressed from the conditions they're kept in. Most folks think that to even have a chance of keeping these guys alive you need to put them through a strict QT with several rounds of antiparasite and deworming treatments. If you check out seahorse.org's disease forum you'll find lots of info on this. I don't mean to discourage you just want you to know what you may be in for with your little guy (and know that the one that died was probably just too weak and stessed to survive so nothing you could have done). I'm sure Jorge has also given you lots of good info. I havn't had the chance to speak to him personally but know that he has an excellent reputation. I wouldn't hesitate to buy horses from him. I considered doing so but ended up getting my eretcus from a small local breeded instead.

Sorry to hear about your seahorse. Any idea what killed it? Any spots, lesions, etc on it? It could have been a bacterial infection. I know these are very common in seahorses especially when tank temps are hotter (more that 76). Anyway I'd keep a close eye on your girl and if she acts lethargic or goes off her food you might want to consider treating her. Don't want to scare you but I'd hate to see you loose the other horse to if its something infectious. If you do need to treat let me know...I have the antibiotics you'll need and would be happy to share.

One of the trick you can use to get seahorses onto frozen in to condition them to associate the smell of garlic with food...kinda like Pavlow's dogs Heres what you do: Buy something like the Kent Garlic any kind of garlic supplement will work as long as it's not the 'odor-free' type. You can even use real minced garlic. For 2-3 weeks soak whatever food you give them in the garlic. Brine shrimp work well for this as they'll ingest the garlic...just make sure you enrich the brine so the seahorses are getting the nutrition they need. Make sure you're consistant about using garlic for every feeding. This will condition the horses to associate garlic with food. For the next 2 weeks start adding small amounts of frozen in with the live food when you feed. Make sure you soak both frozen and live in the garlic. It works best if the frozen is the same type of food as the live. Again brine works as it's easy to come by both live and frozen. After that stop using the garlic on the live but keep using it on the frozen. Over the next couple of weeks start phasing out the live until all you're offering them is frozen. Once you have them on frozen brine you can then start mixing in frozen mysis Following the same pattern as above. 1st feed both soaked in garlic, then stop soaking the brine in garlic, and finally phase out the brine until they're just getting mysis. After they're eating the mysis well you can stop the garlic. This is a long process and to get it to work you really have to give them plenty of time to learn garlic=food. I'm just starting this with my seahorse fry (my adults are CB so they came eating mysis). This seems to be the most commonly recommended method on seahorse.org.

Mine does that too. These guys are very territorial fish so I'm pretty sure he's "fighting" his reflection. Kinda funny to watch and since he hasn't hurt anything doing this I haven't tried to stop him.

Something else you can try is to place in into a small bowl filled with rock rubble and place it into a lowflow area of the tank so it doesn't get blown out of the bowl. After a few weeks it will have attached itself to some of the rubble. Then you can take the rubble it's on a glue or putty the rubble peice to the larger rock where you want it located. I've also used the needle and fishing line method and that seem to work well on smaller frags without much weight to rip the line out. I've also used rubberbands to hold the frag in place but make sure the rubberbands aren't too tight or they'll end up damaging and maybe splitting the softie.