Re:New Member

Dear Denise:

Howdy! Welcome aboard!

It’s good to hear that you enjoyed your Ocean Rider seahorses in the past, Denise, and you will find that the latest generations of highly domesticated Mustangs and Sunbursts are even better adapted for aquarium life that your old ponies were.

Ocean Rider is also offering a new service since you purchased your previous ponies that you may be interested in, Denise. It’s a training program for seahorse keepers that is loaded with tons of helpful information about seahorse husbandry, and I would like to invite you to participate if it’s convenient..

This basic training is very informal and completely free of charge. Ocean Rider provides the free training as a service to their customers and any other hobbyists who are interested in learning more about the care and keeping of seahorses. It’s a crash course on seahorse keeping consisting of 10 separate lessons covering the following subjects, and is conducted entirely via e-mail. There is no homework or examinations or anything of that nature — just a lot of good, solid information on seahorses for you to read through and absorb as best you can, at your own speed:

Aquarium care and requirements of seahorses;
Selecting a suitable aquarium for seahorses;
size (tank height and water volume)
filtration
aquarium test kits
Optimizing your aquarium for seahorses;
lighting
water movement and circulation
hitching posts (real and artificial)
aquascaping
substrate
Cycling a new marine aquarium;
The cleanup crew (aquarium janitors & sanitation engineers);
Water Chemistry
optimal parameters
water quality & water changes
aquarium maintenance schedule
Feeding seahorses;
Compatible tank mates for seahorses;
Courtship and breeding;
Rearing the young;
Disease prevention and control;
Hippocampus erectus
natural history
professional rearing protocols
Acclimating Ocean Rider seahorses.

If you are interested, Denise, I will be providing you with detailed information on these subjects and answering any questions you may have about the material I present. I will also be recommending seahorse-related articles for you to read and absorb online.

Since you are an experienced seahorse keeper and already have a very well established aquarium up and running, I’m sure you’ll breeze right through the training course and earn your certification in no time. If you would like to give the training program a try, just contact me off list ([email protected]) with your full name (first and last), which we need for our records, and I will get you started on the first lesson right away. Since you are a repeat customer and an experienced aquarist, completing the training course is by no means a prerequisite in order for you to place an order and purchase more seahorses, Denise, but I think you would find the detailed information in the lessons to be both interesting and helpful in the long run

Also, I should point out that completing the training course in no way obligates you to purchase Ocean Rider seahorses now or at any time the future. You do not have to have Ocean Rider seahorses to be eligible for the training — it is open to all hobbyists regardless of where they may have obtained their seahorses, or whether they have any seahorses at all. Many of the trainees are simply doing long-term research on seahorses and have no plans to keep them in the near future; they just want to learn as much as they can on the subject for that fateful day when and if they decide to take the plunge…

Best wishes with all your fishes, Denise!

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna