Seahorses in full blown reef tanks

[~Flighty~]

When Jorge from Draco marine (the seahorse breeders) came and talked to the club, he tried to dispel some of the widely held beliefs about seahorses needing calm flow and getting stung by corals. He stayed at our house and thought that other than microbubbles being an issue for males, our tank would be fine for adult seahorses. As long as the tank mates aren't aggressive feeders and the ponies can get enough food they should thrive in a reef.

Has anyone taken his advice to heart and tried it?

I just placed one of our long island wild collected seahorses into the tank to see how she does a few days ago. Tonight for the first time she came out into the water column during feeding time, raced the copperband b-fly to a large PE mysis and took it down to her hitch to eat it. This is with all of the pumps and tunzes on and my tank has particularly strong flow.

Wow.

So anyone else doing this, or have you modified the flow/inhabitants of your seahorse tank because of that talk?

EDIT: had to add a pic. This is where she went down to eat the mysis. I just missed the shot of her with the whole thing hanging out of her mouth.

[randoma]

I think the only real problem with seahorses in a reef tank is anemone's, clams and certain stinging LPS. From what I've seen they can handle flow, although the do need areas of relative calm to rest in.

I'm not sure how happy they'd be with a wavemaker - they tend to get confused when the currents change direction abruptly. I keep my adult 'horse tanks at about 40x tank volume and I expect they'd be fine with higher. Although it depends on the particular specie also - the adult H. reidi I have do not like very high flow, possibly because I got them as adults and they spent most of their lives in tanks with relatively low flow. My H. comes and H. kuda mostly seem to prefer higher flow than lower flow.

[~Flighty~]

Mine have been fine around anemones thus far. I wouldn't try them with agressive fish eaters like haddonis. They seem to know what to stay away from just like the other fish generally do. Jorge reported seeing them hitched in the wild to fire corals, so they seem to handle stings pretty well.

[zax_papa]

Im glad to see that she came out, especially to feed. Great addition!

[dz6t]

I am not sure about seahorse, I have a beautiful red dragon pipe fish that is supposed to be in low flow tank. I put it in the 125 full reef tank before I got the advice. It is doing fine with all the coral and fish. it does have a calm spot to sleep in though.