Dwarf Seahorse questions - 5 Gal

[Bernie21]

Hey guys,
Ive been in reefing for a while, but I had a old 5 gal laying around so I thought I would turn it into a dwarf tank. Ive done some researching online, as I've learned is necessary in this hobby. I've also purchased and read couple general seahorse keeping books. Ive had the tank running for a few weeks. I have the tank set in a corner directly hit by the Ac to keep it cooler during the day. I have seeded it w approximately 2000 pods. I have a sponge filter system.

How many can i keep in this lil tank?

What can I supplement feed? If its live, how do I go about that?

How long should the photo period be?

I have a nano hydor koralia for flow, the smallest one, will that be ok?

Aside from nerith and cerith snails, I have a small blue coral banded shrimp (doesnt grow more than 1") and a porcelain crab (filter feeder), will they be ok?

Lastly, I have Gogonias, and Sponges but are zoas ok?

Sorry for so many questions but these are not things widey covered and most sites are very general and local LFS says most things are fine (not very convincing). I want to make sure Im prepared for it as possible.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and I look forward to picking your brains.

[rayjay]

I've had as many as 50 in my 5g dwarf tank.
Supplemental feeding will be the pods you add to the tank as a 5g tank cannot support enough for use as main food.
Basic feeding would be using enriched brine shrimp nauplii.
Hatch, grow a day, enrich for two 12 hour stages and then feed to the dwarfs.
Feed 2 to 3 times a day, removing any uneaten nauplii before adding the new.
No specific lighting or photo period necessary- ambient lighting sufficient.
Never used a power head in a dwarf tank so you have to be sure to have something covering the intake or any other area that the small dwarfs can get tails into. (two or three dwarfs can fit on a silver dollar)
The ONLY shrimp I would have in a dwarf tank would be mysid shrimp.
You need to do some reading on the Dwarf forum of the seahorse.org site.

[Bernie21]

is live brine better than growing mysid or cultivating pods seperately? Also, where can I order Captive bred dwarfs to ensure that they're not wild?

[rayjay]

Hatching live brine and enriching them are much easier than raising mysids or pods in a separate container, especially as you would have to have such a huge culture of anything else to supply enough food.
The brine, coming in the form of cysts, merely has to be sterilized or decapped before hatching and enriching.
It's still going to be a PITA after doing it for some time, but not as much as trying to grow large enough culture of mysids or pods.
Captive bred dwarfs can be found at seahorsesource.com and seahorsecorral.com.