Yellow Multibanded Pipefish Feeding?

[dkeller_nc]

I just picked up a pair of what I think are juveniles (they're about 4" long) yesterday. They are in a 20g quarantine that's kept like a reef tank (skimmer, about 25 lbs of live rock, etc...).

I've a batch of brine shrimp that should hatch this afternoon, some R.O.E. from Reed Mariculture, a small supply of P.E. Cyclopeeze, live rotifer culture and 4 copepod cultures (about 2.5 gallons each).

I tried R.O.E. first, which elicited an OK feeding response, but by no means robust. Next attempt was with Cyclopeeze - seemed like a considerably stronger feeding response, but because these suckers are so small, it's tough to see whether they're actually ingesting the pods.

Newly hatched brine shrimp and harvested live copepods are on the lunch and dinner menu, but my question is if I'm missing another method/food source that folks have found that works. I'm specifically thinking of PaulB's innovation in feeding grindal worms to mandarins (I intend to copy his brine shrimp feeder, quite a nice idea for a continuous live-food feeder).

Two other questions about these creatures - are they hermaphrodites, or does one simply wait for maturity to determine whether you've two males, two females, or a pair?

Finally, my understanding is that seahorses, mandarins and certain other marine fish are relatively resistant/immune to ich. Is this true for pipefishes? I can rather easily give this pair a hyposalinity ride if folks here think it's necessary, but I don't want to unnecessarily stress delicate fish like these if it's not required.

[mfinn]

One food that I've found to be pretty good for feeding the yellow multibanded pipe fish I've had ( and have) is frozen Hikari Mysis. I use the cubes. They seem to be smaller.

Also with the ones I've had, they seem to be very picky when choosing exactly which piece to eat. It seems they like to look at several before eating one, then repeat the process.

[dkeller_nc]

Thanks for the tip - I've some Hikari in the freezer. Kind of odd thing is that both were eating (or at least pecking at) Cyclopeeze and R.O.E. the morning after arrival, but didn't seem to show much interest with subsequent feedings yesterday.

I'm hoping the newly hatched brine shrimp will sustain them until I can interest them in other more nutritious frozen foods. I'm ramping up the copepod cultures to 20 gallons each of the 4 types that I have, but that'll take 20-30 days to reach the densities necessary if they refuse to eat anything else.

Definitely a challenging fish (but worth it). Now I know a little bit of how the pioneers of orange-spotted filefish keeping must feel.

[dkeller_nc]

No luck with Hikari Mysis (at least yet) - they sniff at it, then ignore it. But they do seem to consume at least a reasonable amount of Cyclopeeze and R.O.E. I've supplemented those with newly hatched brine and what I can harvest from my copepod cultures. So far, so good.

Ultimately, I'd like to breed these fish, since they seem so hard to come by from wild collecting. I suspect that will mean somehow obtaining at least 5 or 6 individuals to ensure getting a pair.