pipefish care
 

Hello,

I'm going to try to keep some pipefish for a research project and while I've kept lots of fish over the years I know how tricky pipefish can be. These are wild caught gulf and dusky pipefish. Anyone have any tips on getting them feeding and food recommendations. I have a setup to raise copepods or Artemis although I know Artemis would have to be enriched. Just looking for thoughts from members who've been successful. Thanks

I have gulfs and started them on adult brine enriched w dans feed and frozen hikari mysis
They are now switched over to frozen

Hi Shrimpgal,

Thanks for the advice. We are feeding them brine now and they seem to be taking it. I'll have to look to see what we are enriching the brine with.

Try mysis. Also, nutramar ova if you can find it.

Thanks rssjsb! I'll definitely look into nutramar ova.

But for perfect health and feeding, build PaulB's feeder. Don't take a chance on your wild pipes not eating frozen. PaulB calls it his Mandarin feeder, but it works great for Pipefish too.

I've also heard success with this feeding regiment

i've got a blue stripe in my QT right now.

he's been smei-interested in Nutramar Ove and frozen Cyclop-eeze. soaking the food in selcon seems to pique a bit more interest in him, and most of my other, fish.

i also loaded up on several softball sized wads of various macro algae to help buffer my pod population, and some chunks of live rock. my QT is fully cycled and has been up for almost two years at this point, so it has some of its own fauna.

i also culture phyto plankton and copepods for dosing to all my tanks. the brine shrimp i feed are freshly hatched, within 24 hours of hatch, still with yolk sac attached.

i haven't tried him on anything else yet, but am planning on giving PE-Myses a shot soon. although being a blue stripe, he is pretty tiny, so i'm not sure how interested he will be in those.

Try Hikari as it is smaller intact mysis. It was the first intact mysis I fed to my juvenile seahorses. Before that I had to shave or chop it.

PE mysis, IME, are very large shrimp that small mouth feeders don't go for.

I found some Dutch lobster eggs if you can't find any Ova.

Anyone have ideas the easiest pipe fish to have in a 40 gallon breeder tank and tank mates... There are many opinions however I would like to hear from anyone with experience if possible.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e9...psd2e9acb5.jpg
I have these 2 banded flag fin pipefish from Ocean Rider. They eat frozen mysis and I think they would do well with calm captive bred fish.

Bluestripes are the easiest in terms of being able to do well in smaller tanks. They're not as easy to get eating frozen. My blue stripes eventually took mysis, but it took them a couple of years. Jannsi are quicker to eat frozen foods. Both require a mature tank even if they will eat frozen because it's just a supplement to their natural diets.

As to tank mates, you should avoid anything aggressive and especially avoid fish that will compete for pods - many (most) types of wrasse, including six lines, possums, probably others. Clown gobies, rainsford/jester gobies, dragonets. You get the picture.

Can someone please link me to a thread that contains this feeder? Thanks in advance. Andrew

Paul's Auto brine shrimp hatchery and feeder
His earlier feeder that he used to manufacture and sell was basically a box frame covered in screen that the mandarins could suck the adult brine shrimp through.
Can't find a pic of it just now though.
Here's another one: they-all-love-feeder

thanks.

Can these guys handle a higher flow SPS tank?

In the past I never had any issues to get my blue stripes to eat frozen foods - they usually picked that up pretty quickly and competed very successfully with my other fish.
live But the male I have right now (the female died due to a snout defect caused by an infection) only takes live foods. I tried frozen brine shrimp but while he will take alive adults he doesn't take frozen ones. Frozen Mysis isn't even looked at so far (my clowns and mandarins don't like them either).
I just transferred him into my 18" cube and hope he will learn to take frozen foods there. If not, he has to find a way to catch the exceptionally quick and mostly night active life Mysis that populate all my rocks and gravel.

As for the original question - I would start a tigger pod culture. It may take a few weeks to get up to speed but should then provide enough pods as add on food.
I set up a 99 liter Sterilite container with saltwater, dosed it with miracle grow, inoculated it with Nanochloropsis and a bottle of california tigger pods and let it sit on the balcony with only a air stone. It now yields one to two good feedings a day.

Another good and easy to culture life food are daphnia. They will live long enough in saltwater and even my blue stripe gulps them down.

Another easy to produce live food can be brine shrimp at various stages. I usually use decapsulated cysts and when they are hatched I transfer the nauplia to a shallow container (Container Store shoe boxes work well) and feed them with a mix of spirulina and yeast. Daily 100% water changes are tequired for the first two weeks to get them to grow quickly. After you have adult brine shrimp you can reduce the water changes to once a week. Always feed the brine shrimp before feeding them to your fish.

Blue stripes can.

Hi, I'd like to know anything to feed them except live foods? Does anyone have an idea? Please let me know if you do. Thank you.

Most pipefish available in the aquarium trade will be wild caught animals.
Many can be trained to take frozen foods (frozen mysid) but the new owners will have to take the time to do the training.
This will require live foods to be given a few times a day in the beginning.
Once they are eating live food and look healthy then training to frozen can begin.

The training to frozen can take be a short or fairly long time period (2 weeks to a few months).
But they will need to be fed frozen 2 times a day (at least that's how often I've fed mine).

Second this. I made two. My mandarins are fat. And so are Paul's pipe fish. It is easy once you get a routine going.

Shelley

Only problem is that brine shrimp have little nutritional value - even with enrichment.

The ideal food for pipefish are copepods and tigger pods are actually very easy to culture. Way less trouble than hatching, separating and enriching Artemia.
By now I feed all my fish live tigger pods at least once a day. You don't need to enrich them and you can't overfeed and mess up the water quality like with frozen foods.
And no feeder needed either.

Sorry but that statement is factually incorrect.

The nutrient value of live brine changes from newborn through to adult.
To start with, the egg sack is the source of the fatty acid (lipids) that many want for their fish or corals, and this begins depleting imediately upon hatch.
In the first stage, the nauplii have no mouth or anus so they cannot feed, except off the egg sack, and, they cannot be gut loaded at this point.
After the first molt the nauplii can be gut loaded but it takes 24 hours for 2nd stage naupli to gut load completely.
It's best to gut load in 2 stages, with a complete water change and new nutrient for each stage.
As the nauplii go through their stages, the fatty acid (lipid) levels decrease, but the protein level increases. Also, as they progress through to adult, the time to gut load decreases to the point the adults will gut load in about 1 hour.
Now, as adults the myth is that brine shrimp have no nutrition. It most likely comes from people looking at the frozen brine shrimp package and reading the percentage protein. Any frozen brine shrimp I've seen, have percentages based on WET weight, while mysis and almost all other foods often report their nutrient levels in terms of DRY weight.
Just think, if you use a flake food, as soon as you put it in the water, it now soaks up tank water and has a higher moisture content, like the already wet brine shrimp. The flake food won't be dry when your fish eat it.
Great Salt Lake cultured brine shrimp will have protein levels close to 60% based on DRY weight.
For FACTUAL information on brine shrimp nutrient see this United Nations article
BRINE SHRIMP NUTRITION

For the most complete factual information on all aspects of brine shrimp, see the total article on Artemia in this UN article which is just a part of a paper on live foods for the aquaculture industry where brine shrimp, both nauplii and adults, are used as a part of the feeding programs for raising fish and shrimp for our food market.
CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION 4.0