I suggest you take off your shoes and get a cup of tea, or beer, this is going to be a
.
IMO you would really be better off long term buying seahorses directly from an aquaculutre seahorse breeding faciclity such as seahorsesource.com . If you do a search on several of the forums mentioned you will find they not only have incredible seahorses, but a very outstanding reputation of customer service.
Many problems can arise from buying seahorses from a LFS. Many seahorses are wild caught. Wild caught seahorses are likely to carry internal parasites, and may or may not be bale to be trained to eat frozen foods.
Treating a WC so it is "healthy" is possible. It requires a fresh water dip on arrival, followed by a prophylatic treatment with praipro and fenbendazole. After the treatments and a quarintine period they then should under go an additional freshwater dip before being placed into there display.
Training on to frozen foods is more iffy as there is no set proceedure that is always effective. The most common and most succsessful way to wean a WC on to frozen is to place them in a completely bare tank with a plastic hitch. Feed live ghosts, then slightly injured ghost shrimp, then dead ghost shrimp being blown around by a turkey baster, then thawed
frozen mysis also blown around by a turkey baster. Some recommend the use of garlic for this training but research from Plymouth has shown that all species of seahorse tested have very small olfactory senses that are deemed to be incapable of smell and most likely used only to recognize there mate.
If the frozen training does not work, you will have to have a feeder tank housing ghost shrimp, as well as making trips to the LFS to buy and keep a constant supply of livefood. When I was keeping WC reidi's I spent about $10 a week per horse to feed them. I was getting 100 ghost shrimp for $10, since then the price has gone up greatly, I have seen freshwater ghosts as high as .75 a piece, which would make feeding 10 a day per horse rather expensive. It is possible to make large orders to get that .75 a piece down, but that requires larger feeder tanks.
Another issue with buying from an LFS is many LFS's are selling "tank bred" seahorses. There is a huge difference between the tank bred horse and a true captive bred horse.
Recently members of Project Seahorse amd a trip to Sri Lanka, and some other places throughout Asia to discuss with intrested individuals on how they could mariculture seahorses (raise seahorses in pens loose in the ocean to help keep down costs) so that they could harvest large numbers of seahorses that are used in the Traditional Chineese Medicine Industry. These seahorses were meant only to be used to ease the collecting of seahorses from the ocean.
Somewhere along the way the owners of these ocean seahorse farms found that they could demand a much higher price for a live seahorse to hobbyist. Companies like ORA began to buy seahorses from these breeders and sell them here in the states as being tank raised.
The seahorses that come from these ocean farms have been exposed to all of the pathogens and parasites that a wild caught seahorse has been. While the seahorses are moved to tanks and many trained to eat frozen, many of them do not receive the best care and do not arrive in the best of care. Even companies like Liveaquaria have been selling these maricultured seahorses as being tank raised.
What I have seen of others experience with these horses is that they often carry parasites, many do not take frozen readily, and they are highly prone to bacterial infections, mainly different strains of vibrio.
Of course all this is completely avoidable if you purchase a captive bred horse from a quality aquaculture facility such as seahorsesource.com, or dracomarine.com. Spending a few dollars more (it is really a few) will save you thousands of dollars over the course of your first year, not to mentuon these animals can live for 7 to 8 years.
So to be blunt buy a captive bred horse from one of the above vendors, do not buy a seahorse at your LFS.
Get up do a little
there is more.
I would not link the three tanks together.
Seahorses require lower temperatures for longterm survival. Most seahorses carry a bacteria internally that is some species of vibrio. There are currently 17 different species that I know of that have been cultured in seahorses. Vibrio becomes more virtulent at higher temperatures. I.E a strain of vibrio that is a non factor at 70F (the bacteria is present but will in no way reproduce or be aggresive leaving a seahorse to fight off the infection without the use of antibiotics) will be a killer at 78F. Higher temperatures in closed quarter expose seahorses to uneeded stress, which lowers there immune system leaving them more suseptable to these different bacterias. In a seahorse tank I would aim for a constant temp no higher then 74F. In my work with another site we have seen a dramatic drop in bacterial disease since using the lower temperatures has become mre common. We also notice a huge trend of deaths due to bacterial infections in the summer months.
Combining multiple systems will not only undoubtedly expose your seahorses to undesirable temperatures, but als expose your other systems to the huge mess that comes along with having a seahorse tank. If you are hoping to kep sometype of sensitive corals, or fish in these other systems the waste that is generated by the seaorses will quickly foul your water quaility to the other systems.
IMO it is best to leave the systems seperate. If you go through this forum you will see threads pertaining to keeping seahorses in refugiums or likes, the same concerns are valid when mixing mulptiple tanks in a common sump. It is great for some reef type or FOWLR setups to increase the water volume, but it is impractical in a seahorse scenario.
I think a sump style refugium would be great.
If you are inclined to gt an overflow box the addition of a sump/refugium is a great assest to your tank, especially since you mentioned you would like a manderin.
IF it were me and I was in your shoes, I would get the biggest tank possible that will fit under your stand, divide part 1/3 of it with the three partion style bubble trap and use the smaller compartment as a home for your pump. I would let the tank drain into the larger compartment. I would fill the large compartment with Miracle Mud by Ecosystems (except no subsitute), some lr rubble, and some chaetomorpha. You can light the refugium section with a clip on light from Home Depot (under $15) and one of those spirally light bulbs. The light will be enough to grow the chaeto. Lighting the refugium inversly of the dispaly tank will also stabalize your PH. The refugum and the chaeto will be a pod factory, which will be good for the tank, and the manderin should you choose to go that route.
The sump is also a great place to stash your heater, and your fluval (what model was that again?) You could place the
protein skimmer (need that type as well, give me a comapny and a model, don't yu dare say HOB
) is not a piece of equipment I recommend or use personally on seahorse tanks. They are fine in the sump but ancedotal evidence as well as some not so scientific research has shown that there is a corelation between the use of protein skimmers and seahrses with Gas Bubble Disease in seahorses who have a certain malfunctioning enzyme that makes them more prone to the disorder.
Personally I like to keep macro algaes and softies in my system. Skimmers remove much of what these plants use to grow. Why work against myself?
For your return pump from the sump I would look at a Mag 3.5 or a Mag5 depending on the amount of head room (amount of space that the pump needs to push vertically) your pump will have to compensate for. You can also use of the option of using your cannister filter for the return pump, but this is generally discouraged. Keeping the pumps seperate seems to be more ideal from the experienced reefers. I never tried using the cannister as a return, thought I would learn from those that walked before me, but do know of a couple of keepers that do that.
Seahorses are not strong swimmers and need far less current then most reef tanks. Through the use of multiple returns, split returns, and spray bars you can increase a bit over the rule of thumb 3-5x an hour turnover. Rule of thumb for your tank would leave you looking for a pump that would push about 180gph into your system. I would recommend a spraybar or multiple return to get yourself a bit above that. Don't go cray, but you can go a little bit more.
I do not think you are going to be able to keep a manderin healthy in a 36g tank longterm without the use of some refugium. You also have the option of doing a HOB style refugium like the kind made by CPR. They are smaller (I believe the large model only holds 7 gallons) but it's use would give the pods a place to reproduce without being hunted or interupted, and the pods could renter the tank without an impeller ride. If money is not an issues I would say to get both. You can never have too much refugium.
I would discourage you mixing different species of syngnathids. Earlier I mentioned the vibrio bacteria. Different species of syngnathids (seahorses, pipefish, etc) all carry different strains of the bacteria. A seahorse or pipefish can be an asymptomatic carrier for the bacteria throughout it's entire life. With some prior resistance the bacteria does not have the ability to take over or harm the horse. Once the seahorse becomes stressed and immune system becomes weaker the seahorse is more suseptable to the illness. The bacteria becomes stronger and disease follows. When you mix speciments that have no prior resistance to the bacteria the other syngnathid is carrying, there is a great for potential for disease to occur in one or both of the speciments.
Good Luck,
Kevin
Vince aka VINNIE 
