Vacationing and seahorses!

vlangel · 06/27/2018, 08:41 AM

I left for a week long family vacation and that always causes me stress regarding my seahorses. Their need to eat multiple times a day, coupled with their need for excellant water quality is not always easy to leave in the care of a novice.

This summer we have a college student interning for a mechanical engineering job living at our house. He is not familiar with any sort of aquaria, much less keeping seahorses. He is a responsible young man however so I bought live ghost shrimp. I asked him to net about 10-12 shrimp daily to feed the seahorses. I had pre-measured dixie cups with food for the shrimp every other day. I also had my sister check in every 3rd day and she understands marine aquaria and has even kept seahorses back in the day.

Anyway my point is that even a responsible novice can fish sit if you have live food and a tank that is not at its limit for bioload. I have a 60 gallon tank plus a 20 gallon sump with 3 seahorses. The system could probably support 4 ponies but I choose to leave some margin for such times as vacations so that the seahorses can go a week without a water change. Of course I do extra before and extra when I return to make up for it. I also do a thorough cleaning of detritus and accumulated debris in the tank before and after. The live food does not degrade the water until it is eaten so I instruct my fish sitter to give enough for a whole day and then some. The ghost shrimp have already been acclimated to higher salinity so they can live months in the tank just eating what they can scavenge.

This worked well. I came home to fat, happy seahorses and a tank that did not look too bad. I would not do this for more than a week without a water change but I just wanted folks to know that you can go away with seahorses.

06/27/2018, 08:41 AM	#1
vlangel Registered Member Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 2,409	Vacationing and seahorses! I left for a week long family vacation and that always causes me stress regarding my seahorses. Their need to eat multiple times a day, coupled with their need for excellant water quality is not always easy to leave in the care of a novice. This summer we have a college student interning for a mechanical engineering job living at our house. He is not familiar with any sort of aquaria, much less keeping seahorses. He is a responsible young man however so I bought live ghost shrimp. I asked him to net about 10-12 shrimp daily to feed the seahorses. I had pre-measured dixie cups with food for the shrimp every other day. I also had my sister check in every 3rd day and she understands marine aquaria and has even kept seahorses back in the day. Anyway my point is that even a responsible novice can fish sit if you have live food and a tank that is not at its limit for bioload. I have a 60 gallon tank plus a 20 gallon sump with 3 seahorses. The system could probably support 4 ponies but I choose to leave some margin for such times as vacations so that the seahorses can go a week without a water change. Of course I do extra before and extra when I return to make up for it. I also do a thorough cleaning of detritus and accumulated debris in the tank before and after. The live food does not degrade the water until it is eaten so I instruct my fish sitter to give enough for a whole day and then some. The ghost shrimp have already been acclimated to higher salinity so they can live months in the tank just eating what they can scavenge. This worked well. I came home to fat, happy seahorses and a tank that did not look too bad. I would not do this for more than a week without a water change but I just wanted folks to know that you can go away with seahorses.