Scientific Name :Genus Hippocampus

Origin : Tropical And Temperate Oceans

DIfficulty : Medium To Hard

Minimum Size Tank : 10 To 50 Gallons

Temperament : Peaceful

Temperature : 72 - 82°F

Reef Safe : Yes

Maximum Size : 1 to 14 Inches Depending On Species

Diet :Carnivore

The beautiful and amazing seahorse is a type of fish that is world famous for its remarkable resemblance to horses. The Seahorse has captured the imagination of children and adults alike and is also a popular fish in the marine aquarium hobby.

They are part of the family Syngnathidae which include other similar fishes such as Pipefish, the Leafy Sea Dragon along with the Weedy Sea Dragon.

Seahorses are also dried and used in oriental medicine. This, along with the aquarium hobby have been depleting stocks of seahorses rapidly from our oceans.

The normally live in sheltered areas such a mangroves and areas with plenty of seagrass. There is a reason why they require such areas to thrive. All seahorses are horribly slow swimmers and are easy prey to predators fish or crustacean alike.

They come in a variety of sizes from 0.5-1 inches (Hippocampus Zosterae, Hippocampus Bargibanti) to the giants that can grow longer than a foot (Hippocampus Ingens).

As such, they are usually only housed in species specific aquariums. Which is an aquarium that was built solely for the purpose of keeping seahorses.

Such aquariums usually have low flow and good height. Strong flow makes life somewhat difficult for seahorses as they find it hard to swim.

All the inhabitants in the aquarium are carefully hand picked. Since they require some material to grasp onto, macroalgae or dead coral branches are usually used.

Stinging corals that include hammer corals, frogspawns, octopus, dendrophyllia sp and plate corals are avoided.

Definitely no anemones either. Seahorses are easy prey for such stinging corals and sea anemones can devour them in no time at all.

The seahorse has a very specific diet. They only feed on tiny crustaceans such as copepods, amphipods and some types of isopods, munnid isopods for example.

They must constantly graze on these crustaceans throughout the day because they have very poorly developed stomachs. It must be noted that seahorses are notoriously slow eaters which is mainly why they are not kept with other fish. They can't catch the food fast enough.

Common foods in the marine aquarium hobby like brine shrimp should be avoided. If you cannot get it to eat anything else then at least soak the brine shrimp in Selcon or purchase a spirulina enriched version.

Getting them to eat prepared foods may be difficult. The best way to get them on frozen foods is a technique also used with the finicky Mandarin Fish. It essentially involves feeding them live brine shrimp while slowly adding frozen brine shrimp in the hopes that they start eating it. Should that happen, wean them off brine shrimp by slowly adding more nutritious foods like frozen mysis shrimp and krill.

Some hobbyists go so far as to breed amphipods (Gammarus) for their seahorses. A nutritious treat for sure.

Seahorses have a very unique arrangement when it comes to breeding. The female deposits her eggs into the males egg pouch. The male then fertilizes the eggs and holds them for as long as four weeks. They are the only known fish in the world to have pouches specially designed to hold eggs this way.

When the babies are ready to hatch, the male seahorse expels them from his pouch. They are exact duplicates of the adults, differing only in size.

Seahorses have successfully been bred in captivity by numerous hobbyists and companies. The young are fed newly hatched brine shrimp before they are introduced to other foods such as tank cultured copepods.

It should be noted that newly hatched brine shrimp are not a great food for baby seahorses and may be difficult for them to digest. The preferred food is wild plankton, but that may be difficult to obtain and culture at home.

A dedicated number of tanks are required for breeding. The work can be intensive with food preparation and maintaining water quality for both the adult and baby seahorses.