New project: Seagrass/Seahorse tank

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mogurnda

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I have been fantasizing about this for years. What I wanted to do originally was plumb a 45 tall inline with the 90, put a in vdsb (very deep sand bed), add some seagrasses, and then ultimately get some CB seahorses. After talking to Jorge Gomezjurado about his new seahorse aquaculture (Draco Marine Aquaculture, you can get them from Dr Mac) company in Baltimore, I decided to do it.

Problem was that the reef tank temp is too high. Even tropical species, like H reidi, prefer mid-70s, rather than the low 80s that my reef stays at.

Undeterred, I decided to set up a smaller tank in the basement, where it never gets too hot. We needed to have some reason to go down to that room anyway.

After some input from Samala (check out her website) about seagrass care and the gang at seahorse.org about any issues I may have missed, here's what I'm going with:

30 gallon Xtall (the ponies need the vertical space)
130W PC light, with 2X65W 10000K lamps
15 lbs live rock, mostly covered with mushrooms and some red grape macro
6" sandbed of fine aragonite, live sand from my nano and Florida live sand
24" aquafuge, with live rock rubble, chaetomorpha, gracilaria, 36W PC light

Except for the tank (not too expensive) and the fuge (which I won in a raffle), all the equipment was already lying around. Note that there's no skimmer, or filter of any kind. Based on what I have read, and my experience with FW vascular plants, I may even need to add nitrate to keep up with plant growth. We'll see.

I will also be setting up an autotopoff once I get time to build a shelf over the tank. Because the plants use carbonate as a carbon source, I will be doing an experiment to see if using bicarbonate in the topoff will keep up with demand and maintain alkalinity.

So that's the start of the plan.
 
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mogurnda

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Here's the start of it:

The tank:


add sand and some SW:


more water, live rock and live sand:


let it clear overnight:


Rearrange a little (ooh, bad exposure)


and voila, a tank!

The manatee grass and shoal grass, plus some other goodies, will be arriving from Florida Pets in a few days. I can't wait!
 

wastememphis

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Good to hear, I'm glad you can finally do it, its been a long time comming. What is the feeding schedual for CB seahorses? Thats the only factor that has kept me from starting a tank.
 

mogurnda

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Looks like they need to be fed about twice a day. I'm wondering whether I should just throw a pregnant mollie in when I have to travel
 

OrionGirl

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Are you planning on building up more points for them to cling to, or relying on the grass to grow up enough? Very cool--I wish I had the time to setup a pony tank. :) Such cool animals--though I'd probably want to add some pipe fish as well. Any inverts?
 

mogurnda

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I want to give the plants a chance to grow before the ponies arrive. The red grape colonies should also be putting out some good growth now that they're under better light. I will also be moving a few non-photosynthetic gorgonians here so they'll be easier to target feed. Finally, I killed some nice acropora colonies last winter (I am still cringing about it), and their skeletons should make nice hitching posts.

I'm taking it slow on the tankmates. I have a few snails, porcelain crabs, and ghost shrimp coming up with the seagrass. Because it's always dropping frags, I'm also tempted to toss in some capnella as well.
 

mogurnda

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wastememphis said:
would they cling to grogorians?
Yep, they should. I have been thinking about adding halides down the line, and I would probably add some frags of the big colonies from the reef then.
 

mogurnda

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They came from various places. The big brown one in the middle came from TBS, the orange-ish one in right-center was from Dr Mac, and the bushy one at far left started as a frag from a local reefer. I'm really glad I decided to focus on gorgs, I loive looking at them and they are so durable.
 
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