Switching tanks

Dear Haynes:

I think it’s an excellent idea to upgrade your seahorse setup to a 40-gallon aquarium with superior height! An aquarium 24 inches tall is just right for a home hobbyist. It has excellent height that will allow your seahorses to mate comfortably and to safeguard them against depth-related conditions such as gas bubble syndrome, but isn’t so tall that working on the tank and performing routine maintenance will present a challenge.

If you can give me a little more information about your current 30-gallon seahorse setup and remind me what you are using for your filtration system, Haynes, I would be happy to explain how I would go about making the move to the new aquarium. What type of substrate and decor do you have in the 30-gallon tank, sir? What equipment or filters do you have installed on it? If you can fill me in with a few more details on your 30-gallon system, I can provide you with much better instructions regarding the best way to make the transfer.

Despite their brilliant colors and seemingly delicate appearance, dottybacks (Pseudochromis spp.) in general are surprisingly aggressive, territorial fish that can get downright nasty with their tankmates. As a rule, they are not compatible with seahorses.

The orchid dottyback (Pseudochromis friedmani) is the only species that I would possibly consider keeping with seahorses, and only then if it was a captive bred specimen raised at a high-health aquaculture facility and I had a backup tank I could relocate either the P. friedmani or the seahorses to if things didn’t work out. It is much more passive than most dottybacks.

In short, avoid the Springer’s dottyback at all costs, Haynes. It would be nothing but trouble in the seahorse tank. Keep in mind that any fish you bring home from your LFS — whether it is wild-caught or captive bred — MUST be rigorously quarantine for several weeks before you can introduce it to your display tank.

Best of luck with your tank upgrade, sir!

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna

Dear Haynes:

Well done! It sounds like you did a fine job of switching to the larger aquarium and transferring all your specimens and filters.

Give the new setup a couple of weeks to settle in and make sure that everything is running smoothly and that there are no ammonia or nitrite spikes, and then you certainly may consider adding a few new specimens. A 45-gallon aquarium with excellent height like your new setup should be able to accommodate another pair of Sunbursts, a bumblebee shrimp, and another small fish without any problems if it is equipped with an efficient filtration system.

In that regard, I would suggest upgrading your filter to something a bit more suitable for the larger, taller aquarium. As it is now, there simply would not be enough water movement to provide good circulation throughout the 45-gallon extra tall aquaria.

For example, as a general rule of thumb, if your filtration is not turning over the entire volume of the aquarium a MINIMUM of 5 times per hour, then you’re seahorse setup is undercirculated. With waterfall return or a spray bar return raised above the surface of the water to diffuse the outflow, you can achieve turnover rates of up to 10-20 times the volume of your tank every hour without producing too much turbulence or current for seahorses. A waterfall return is another good way to diffuse the output from your filter, and also works well for seahorses. There will be an area of relatively vigorous water movement at one end of the aquarium underneath and nearby the waterfall, while the other end of the tank is a relatively low flow area.

In short, for a 45-gallon aquarium, I would suggest using a filter that moves at least 250 gallons per hour. If you do decide to upgrade the filtration system as well, Haynes, be sure to preserve the biological filtration media with all of its it’s beneficial nitrifying bacteria intact and unimpaired from your current filters so that there is no disruption of your biological filtration.

Your current aquarium parameters are right on the button. If you want to consider a dottyback for your aquarium, make sure it is a captive bred orchid dottyback (Pseudochromis friedmani), once they are relatively passive and inoffensive as far as dottybacks go. Other species of Pseudochromis can be highly aggressive fish that can get downright nasty with their tankmates at times.

Best of luck with your new, improved seahorse tank, Haynes!

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna