Keeping seahorses is not for the faint of heart. It’s expensive, they can be touchy, and they need a lot of attention. Having said that, they are enormously rewarding to keep and few fish match their unique personalities and charm. And really, if you truly love them, none of this will bother you because you’ll want to do the right thing by them anyway.

You can’t just go on vacation and hope that your neighbor Charlie will follow the feeding directions you lovingly typed up. Otherwise intelligent people can really, really, really screw this up so will have to train someone reliable in the fine art of seahorse feeding. Quite often, this ends in disaster.

Keeping seahorses is not for the impatient. It can take months to cycle a tank to the point where it is safe and stable enough for seahorses. There is nothing quite as boring as looking at a tank with no fish but if you decide to do it right, you’ll have to cope with it. (Technically, there are ways around this but for a beginner I think it is better to err on the side of caution and go slowly.)

In Australia, a group of four captive-bred seahorses (we’ll use potbellies as our example) will cost about $180 plus another $120 for shipping for a total of $400 just for the seahorses. I don’t know about you but I think $100 per fish is a lot of money but don’t worry, the price only goes up from there.

Equipment prices will vary depending on how resourceful you are. I’d say to plan for maybe $500 if you buy used equipment (check Facebook marketplace but make sure you aren’t buying someone else’s problem) and a whole lot more if you turn things up a notch. I’m budgeting two grand for my next super-deluxe seahorse ranch but hopefully it won’t be that much. We’ll see.

Next up, you’ll have to learn about maintaining good water conditions, testing your water, treating your water if needed, and so on. Time and time and time again I see people bringing water samples into the local fish shop when in fact they should be doing it themselves and learning a bit about their tanks.

Finally, there is the problem of dealing with sick seahorses. This part is hard and there are no easy answers. Most fishkeepers aren’t veterinarians or ichthyologists but for whatever reason, when their fish get sick they start dosing the tank with medication based on a best guess or what someone on Facebook told them to do. I know of one vet near us that will look at fish and they make you bring the fish in to their office which stresses them tremendously so you have to decide if it is worth the added risk or not. Sick fish can often be nursed back to health simply by improving water conditions but sometimes not. The best treatment is prevention of course, but sometimes they get sick regardless. On the bright side, if you take good care of your seahorses they should not be prone to illness.

The purpose of this page isn’t to scare you off so much as it is to warn you a bit about what you are getting into. Unlike keeping most fish, keeping seahorses is almost a lifestyle change. They can be fussy eaters, they are intolerant of poor water conditions, they can’t really have too many tankmates (best to be on their own really), and when they die it is an expensive loss. This is all stuff you’ll have to deal with when you get into seahorses.

Even with all of that in mind, seahorses are magical and wondrous to keep and worth the time and effort and money and all of that. Having seahorses in your livingroom is a majorly cool thing to do, you will dig it. And really, once your seahorses are settled in and you’ve established a care routine, they should be okay as long as you keep up your end of the deal.