yay! my horses came in today 100% alive and in good shape......thats the good news..the bad news is this:

All of my medication that i ordered with the horses came in the same box, when my mom recieved the package at her office this morning it was leaking and she refused the package saying it was leaking and she wouldnt take it. Thank goodness it wasnt water from the bag that was spilling, but what WAS spilling was the 16oz bottle of formalin (formaldahyde) i had ordered. My mom opened the box and immediatly started coughing and gagging so badly that her coworker had to give her an oxygen mask and have her lie down.

She called dan at seahorsesource and he said he would immediatly replace everything...no charge.

But the entire package was covered in methylene blue and formalin that had leaked out and in order for all of this to have happened, the fedex people would have had to do some serious dropping, turning upside down, and shaking to that box. We made a formal complaint to fedex but who knows what good itll do.

Aside from all of this my horses are fine and are acclimating as we speak. Ill get pictures when i put them in the tank.

Thats wrong to ship them in the same box

I hope your mom is doin ok

shes fine, thanks. shes still a little lighheaded, But now we know not to have any chemicals shipped in the same box as any live animals...

anyways, heres my pair right here! Ive chosen names.....the male is "Crazy horse" and the female is named "venture" because she was the first the start swimming around and venturing out into her new tank.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y2/geckoguy14/IMG_0266.jpg

and by the way....do i wait until tomorrow to feed them?

Feed them whenever you like. No need to wait. They look EXCELLENT!

thanks, they are beautiful arent they? im completely captivated by their every move. just the way they move their eyes, their gills, their tails...the way they swim and the way they grab each other's tails it looks like they are saying softly "i love you". Renee, youve been skippin out on me about how amazing they are in real life, shame shame :)

They both ate hungrily tonight and the snicking was loud enough to hear clearly through the tank walls.

Thanks again for all of your help renee, i would also like to thank David, greg, and rob without yall i would not have such wonderfully beautiful animals in my possession.

My son wants a SH tank so bad! He has been asking for a year now, maybe I will have to start researching them. Would you say they are more or less work than a reef tank? (sorry for the brief thread hijack Cyclura).

nice looking SH! i'm a real sucker for cirri (the dermal appendages on the male's head)...ask Renee.

you're SO gonna dig having them. congrats!

Would you say they are more or less work than a reef tank?

definitely more...probably the most demanding fish i've kept. for one thing, SH need to be fed every day (they have very rudimentary digestive tracts), no slacking there. if you go on vacation, you'd need to have somebody feed them.

this is definitely a case where research ahead of time is your friend.

Whoah... nice cirri! I wish my Reidi were adorned with all of that too! But alas.. Reidi don't get that fancy...

They look great..nice big bellies on em! I can't wait to get my bigger tank going.

Ditto on Greg's "vacation feeding". Gustavo (Neo) feeds mine when I'm away.

No worries and no need to "thank" me. I do like helping out.

Dave

yes i noticed the cirri on "crazy horse" he's almost alien-like with those appendages. So thats only a masculine trait, no females have cirri?

Females can have it too... he's just saying he likes the appendages on your male.

ah, i see.

quick question though, can i add a small air-powered sponge filter to my QT tank? no matter how well i siphon off uneaten food every day inevitably theres always some left over. Its evident when i do any cleaning in the tank because once the water is stirred theres a medial amount of food thats driving me crazy floating around the tank because i just cant for the life of me seem to get it all out through siphoning. I'd like this for some chemical and mechanical filtration mostly but i understand that this will allow a place for denitrifying bacteria to grow....will adding the sponge filter cause a dangerous ammonia spike in my tank?

unless the sponge is cleaned daily, it will try to cycle, and this is something you don't want. so, you may use it, but it needs to be attended to.

you might want to try defrosting and rinsing the food, then let it soak in a bit of SW for a few minutes before feeding it out...this will help to keep it from floating around.

If your sponge was innoculated already by a cycled tank I would add it but not a dry sponge.

Get some Amquel+ or, my personal favorite, Ultimate. I've had 3 QT tanks going since May of last year with seahorses in there. Hoping to get them into a regular tank really soon!

i ordered some amquel + and have it....it says its a nutrient reducer but is it really safe and how often do you use it?

I use it every other day and have been doing so for a year. Yup it's safe.

I use it (combined with an ammo-alert card) in my seahorse grow out tanks ALL the time. It's more than safe. Just make sure you know why and when you are using it (i.e. test yer water ;) )

Dave

im gonna have to say it reduces the amount of nutrients in your tank (N02, N03, NH4) and therefore prevents a cycle ina quarantine tank. Am i ballpark on this assumption?

Ive used it and now that you have given me the idea, im going out tomorrow to buy a ammo-alert card for the tank....thats a good idea i wish i had thought of that. I test for ammonia and such weekly and its been at zero.

The card needs to "break in" but lasts for a while thereafter.

D

Yes the cards are great. You pass in front of your tank and peek in a million times a day. If something were to go seriously south in the tank you would know faster than you would otherwise. Just don't rely on them to see when routinely if ammonia is in your tank.

Your QT tank will not cycle. There is nothing in there for bacteria to live on, in enough quantities, to support the process of converting ammonia to nitrite to nitrate. The amquel "simply" bonds with the ammonia and nitrite (and whatever else) to render them harmless.