Wayne Sallee wrote:
Some good tank mates for sea horses [...]

Brandonb wrote on Mon, 04 Sep 2006:
My local shop also keeps Rainsford's Gobies AKA Court Jester Gobies in with
them and seem to be fine.

This actually isn't a good way to tell. Most local fish stores have high
turnover in livestock, plus a good fraction of in-store mortality.

Just as an example, have you ever seen a mandarin dragonet ("goby") in your
local store? They're almost always kept in clear bottomless tanks. Yet we
know, to keep a mandarin alive long term, you need a mature tank with lots of
live rock. Mandarins will generally not eat prepared/frozen food, only live
'pods (which grow in your live rock). Net result: the mandarins in the stores
are generally all slowly starving to death, but may be purchased by a consumer
before they die. If the consumer has a large mature tank, they may find food
there later. If the consumer has a tank that looks like the fish store tank,
they'll die soon enough.

As to your suggestion: peaceful gobies can indeed be good tankmates for
sea horses. But I just wanted to caution that you can't learn much just
because you see that pairing in the store. Those sea horses could well be
slowly starving to death.

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
The human spirit is a very hard thing to kill. Even with a chainsaw.