Planning a SH 150...please critique

[Mikey Donuts]

Hello, I am in the process of planning a 150 gallon Seahorse tank and I would appreciate any input and advice. This will be my first attempt at keeping seahorses, so please feel free to critique the system & equipment. I'm going to start ordering equipment next week, and I would rather correct any mistakes now, rather than when I've already got livestock in the tank. I plan on keeping H. Erectus since they seem to be a relatively easy species to keep and breed successfully. Any way here goes....

The tank will be acrylic 48"x24"x30" (3/4" thick) with an external overflow, center brace, and black background. All of the equipment will be housed in the 40" tall stand (no fish room). The overflow will be plumbed into a Deltec 851 skimmer resting in the combination sump/fuge (approx 36"x18"x16"). The skimmer section will flow into a small refugium containing live rock & chaeto and will be lit by a 6500k bulb at night. Fuge then runs into the sump. The return pump (red dragon 6.5) will be located in the sump as will a phoban reactor & other misc equip. Additionally, there will be an unlit 10 gallon tank located over the fuge containing numerous filter pads for pod production. This will slowly be fed water by a peristaltic pump from the skimmer section and then be plumbed into the main fuge via small diameter PVC. I basically want to do this to increase the refugium volume due to the small footprint of the tank. There will also be a Deltec km500 kalk reactor and a 20 gallon RO/DI reservoir located above the sump for topoff.

As far as lighting goes, I plan on using two 175w MH's (probably 14k) with actinic supp (all run off of icecap ballasts). I will use moonlights as well.

Other equipment will be a JBJ artica 1/4 HP chiller, an ozotech ozone reactor w/air dryer (fed into the skimmer), and two vortechs for flow (set for a low turnover). All of this will be controlled by an aquacontroller III pro. All electrics will be run through an American DJ power strip. I plan on buying a small gas generator as well for emergency power.

Here is my livestock list:
8x h.erectus
Neon goby
Rainford's goby
Yasha-hase goby
Diamond watchman Goby
Possible purple firefish or fairy wrasse

6x Skunk cleaner shrimp
Zoos, palys, sun corals, xenia, star polyps, mushrooms, photosynthetic gorgonians, tube worms, candycane coral, multiple snails
Possible fighting conch
Possible calcareous algae

I have a few questions as well:

Is the lighting too much/too little? I am mainly concerned about the zoos & gorgonians getting enough light.

Should I get four males & four females or some other combination? I do want them to breed, but I don't want more than I fry than I can handle. Would 2 males and six females work well? I've read that seahorses pair off, so will an unbalanced ratio be OK for the horses?

Are eight horses too many/few for this size of a tank?

Would a firefish or fairy wrasse be OK in this tank? Does anyone have one of these fish in their SH tank now?

Once the system becomes mature, would it be OK to add a mandarin, or would it have trouble finding enough pods with all of the seahorses in the tank?

I plan on keeping the tank at around 74 degrees. Will the inverts be OK at this temp?

Well, that's about it. Thanks in advance for all of your help. ANY suggestions would be appreciated. I've learned a ton of useful info from this forum.
Mike

[sugartooth]

Sounds like a great tank!
Personally, I would pick one goby and leave it at that.....
Yasha is a good choice, I think Diamond Watchman may be too fast and furious for the seahorses.
Same thing with wrasses, but many have had success with them as tank mates.
I think 8 is just right, or you may get 2 more than that. It kind of depends on your aquascaping too, and how much rock you got in there.

I would also hesitate to put cleaners in there.....you may give it a try and if it doesn't work out, you would have to catch them somehow. However, others have also done this successfully.

[whatnot45]

You could fit WAY more than 8 seahorses in a 150 gallon tank. But 8 sounds like a good number Basically, get as many as you want... General rule of thumb 10-15 gallons per pair. Thats like 20 or 30 seahorses for a 150 gallon tank. Im not saying i recomend that, but its possible so feel free to add more later on.

[pledosophy]

Here's my two cents.

Your tank is going to be wonderful.

I liek your stocking list as is except I would substitute the cleaner shrimp for peppermint shrimp. Cleaner shrimp can stress seahorses to the point of no good.

All the other tankmates you have planned are fine IME, I've never kept a fairy wrasse myself though. have kept the rest they were great. (you have good taste) Manderins will do great, IME.

The tank stocking will be on the lower side, which is good IMO.

I don't think the ten gallon tank with filter pads is needed, but it won't hurt anything. Pods will grow and reproduce in the rock and in the refugium.

I also doubt that with the corals your planning your going to need a kalk reactor, but if you got the cash they don't hurt anything. I just add kalk to my auto top off resivoir.

As far as ratio's I like to go even numbers. There is somtimes some competion between seahorses for mates, but it's nothing to worry about. JMO.

IMO the light is kinda on the low side for a 150g. Perhaps you could get some supplemental T5 lighting. Do you know what temp of light your going to run your MH's at?

HTH

[Mikey Donuts]

Thanks for the advice everyone! I think I will most likely stick with eight horses, and will most likely add a firefish and the gobies I mentioned (I'll do some more research on the watchman goby though). I would still like to attempt cleaner shrimp, but maybe just go with one along with a bunch of peppermint shrimp.
Pledosophy- What wattage light would you recommend in the 14k range. I was going to go with 250MH initially, but I thought it might be overkill for the inverts I want to keep. Maybe 175MH with T-5 supplementation would be a better option? Please let me know what you think....
Also, the fuge will be pretty small for a 150. The deltec I want to use will be in-sump and will take up quite a bit of room, so that's why I want to do the additional pod tank. Plus I'm pretty interested in cryptic refugia and may go with half filter pads/ half eggcrate.
One more thing- as far as the male to female ratios goes...I would like to have evenly matched pairs, but I don't want to deal with hundreds of dead fry every couple of weeks. Are Erectus seasonal breeders, or do they reproduce year round? If I were to go with six females and two males, would the females try to aggressively pursue the males?
Thanks again for your input.
Mike

[ann83]

One thing to think about is if you only have two males and six females, your males can get exhausted very quickly carrying brood after brood, while the females will go on being frisky, and the fry will start to get very fragile. Same goes with several males and a couple females, then the females will be the ones getting exhausted and weak from producing so many eggs. You can adjust the length of the light cycle and the temperature of the tank to slow down breeding, but the effects seem to be short lived. If you really don't want to deal with a bunch of fry all the time, I'd suggest a single sex tank, either all males or all females. And then one day if you decide you want to deal with fry, you can get the other gender from the same breeder you got the first SH from.

[Mikey Donuts]

Ann, that sounds like a good idea. I may go with five females initially, setup some fry and growout tanks after a few months, and buy the males a month or two after that. I hadn't considered the males being overworked! Thanks for the advice.