Banded pipefish .. What do I feed him?

[mcardenas]

I just recently purchase a banded pipefish and i want to know what I should feed him. And how many times ?

[FTDelta]

They're definitely not recommended for beginners due to specialized feedings multiple times a day. Considered difficult to keep and best in tanks with seahorses and their own kind. Sadly they're best left for experienced aquarists. Require very matured tanks.

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/pipefish/Banded.php

[campos]

Originally Posted by ftdelta

they're definitely not recommended for beginners due to specialized feedings multiple times a day. Considered difficult to keep and best in tanks with seahorses and their own kind. Sadly they're best left for experienced aquarists. Require very matured tanks.

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/pipefish/banded.php

+1

[thegrun]

...this is an important question to ask BEFORE you make any livestock purchase.

[Mr.Tan]

if i were you, unless you have great deals of experience i would return the fish if at all possible... they are not easy to keep, and require a lot of work and the right tank setup.

[msmith619]

This is an email from Ocean Rider Kona, HI- aka Seahorse.com

They sell captive bred banded Pipefish that are eating frozen Mysis. You will probably need to feed live food at least twice a day for some time until yours can be trained to take froze (small!!!) Mysis shrimp. Full sized mysis are going to be too big.

Here is the email:

Dear Michael:
Here is additional information on the Ocean Rider banded pipefish that that I promised you

Ocean Rider's new cultured banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) are very hardy and much to feed than wild-caught pipes, and they certainly do make wonderful companions for Mustangs and Sunbursts (Hippocampus erectus).

Once they have settled into a new aquarium, they will accept a variety of frozen foods and nonliving foods, but they are not dish trained. The food for them needs to be carefully dispersed or you can target feed the pipefish with a baster or something similar. As you know, seahorses are accustomed to plucking small invertebrates from the vegetation are the substrate, which is a feeding habit that makes it easy to train them to take frozen Mysis from a feeding station. But the pipefish are accustomed to plucking zooplankton suspended in the water column while they are swimming, and they therefore need to be target fed rather than coming to a feeding station. They do readily accept small frozen Mysis or minced Mysis once they are accustomed to their surroundings and feel at home, but their food needs to be presented to them from above so that it drifts down right in front of their snouts, whereupon they will snatch it from the water column and dart around cleaning up the remaining pieces that drift down.

However, several hobbyists that keep their red banded pipefish with their seahorses have reported that the pipes eventually learned to take frozen Mysis from the feeding station by following the seahorses' example. That was true for Ann Marie Spinella and Lisa Parnpichate, for example, as you can see below:


The left-hand photo above shows Ann Marie Spinella's custom-made seahorse tank, which measures 16"L x 18"W x 27"H and holds approximately 34 gallons of saltwater. Notice the orange cup coral she has mounted on the live rock to serve as a feeding station for her ponies. The close-up on the right shows her new pair of Ocean Rider seahorses helping themselves to frozen Mysis from their cup coral feeding dish. Ann Marie likes to point out that her new Sunbursts began using the cup coral feeding station on their own, with no training whatsoever, a few hours after being introduced to the aquarium, despite just having been acclimated to their new home with a feeding dish they had never seen before. Photos by Ann Marie Spinella.


Ann Marie's cup coral feeding station can get a little crowded at mealtime since the seahorses' tankmates soon learned to follow their example. Her tank-raised Psychedelic Mandarin Goby (Pterosynchiropus picturatus) now comes to the cup coral to partake, and even her Ocean Rider red banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) have learned to clean up scraps of Mysis from the feeding station. Photo by Ann Marie Spinella


Other hobbyists prefer a more whimsical approach to their feeding stations. For instance, the two photographs above show Lisa Parnpichate's 75-gallon hexagonal seahorse setup. The close-up on the right reveals that she has chosen a plastic soapdish in the shape of a sea turtle to serve as her feeding station. Notice how she has cleverly attached the "swimming sea turtle" to the formation of staghorn coral so that it looks like the turtle is suspended in midwater, leisurely gliding past the coral. Photos by Lisa Parnpichate

How do Lisa's Mustangs feel about their adorable sea turtle feeding station? As you can see from the four photographs below, it suits them very well indeed! Even her Ocean Rider red banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) will snatch a piece of frozen Mysis from the feeding station on occasion.

Photo by Lisa Parnpichate

Photos by Lisa Parnpichate

Photo by Lisa Parnpichate

This is what I normally advise home hobbyists with regard to the new cultured pipefish, Lora:


Red Banded Pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus)

A new strain of hardy captive-bred-and-raised has finally arrived on the market in the United States! Ocean Rider has developed a beautiful line of cultured Red Banded Pipefish that are every bit as hardy and easy to breed as the ever-popular Mustangs and Sunbursts seahorses for which they are famous! That's welcome news for hobbyists and seahorse lovers who have struggled with delicate wild-caught pipefish in the past that have long been regarded as suitable "for experts only" because they are so difficult to keep healthy in captivity. By comparison, Ocean Rider's Red Banded Pipefish are accustomed to aquarium life and are very well adapted to captive conditions, thereby providing pathogen-free pipefish that are perfect companions for their High Health seahorses for the first time.

Ocean Rider's Red Banded Pipefish are a new color variety of the common Banded Pipefish or Ringed Pipefish (D. dactyliophorus) and are even more beautiful than their ordinary black-banded relatives. Rather than the black bands or rings, the new strain of pipefish sport maroon bands or dark red rings instead, as their common name suggests.

Preferred Parameters (Water Conditions):
Water Temperature: 72°F to 78°F
pH: 8.1 to 8.4
Specific Gravity: 1.020 to 1.025
Ammonia: zero at all times
Nitrite: zero at all times
Nitrate: less than 20 ppm (optimal <10 ppm)
Maximum Size: up to 8 inches in total length; 3-5 inches is typical for new aquarium specimens, but they will continue to grow all of their lives.
Social or Territorial: highly social; does best in mated pairs or small groups of its own kind.
Breeding Habits: banded pipefish are livebearers that form mated pairs; they are pouch breeders (females attach their eggs to the brood patch on the underside of their mates and the males then carry the eggs and developing young until birth).

The Red Banded Pipefish is one of the highly prized reef pipefish or flagtail pipefish from the tropical IndoPacific. It is a relative of the seahorse with a very long, slender, cylindrical body that resembles a colorful pipe cleaner (hence the name pipefish). This species is boldly marked, with dark reddish to maroon vertical rings running the length of its body and a very striking flag-like tail that is used to propel it horizontally through the water. The tail is a bright red oval with a brilliant white margin all around and a distinctive yellow mark in the center that is often shaped like a cube or rectangle rather than a round dot. This brilliant tail fin makes the Red Banded Pipefish a faster, stronger swimmer than its seahorse cousins and it rarely comes in direct contact with the substrate. Unlike the slowpoke seahorse, which moves through the water vertically (head up and tail down) with a stately, dignified swimming style, the Red Banded Pipefish propels itself horizontally through the water like a torpedo with powerful strokes of its oar-like tail and sinuous body when swimming.

Feeding and Diet:

The Red Banded Pipefish is a carnivore that needs a meaty diet but it's tiny, tubular mouth severely limits the size of the prey items it can consume. In the wild, its diet consists primarily of copepods and in the aquarium it will thrive in a well-established tank with lots of live rock and macroalgae that houses a large pod population. Hobbyists will find it convenient to supplement its diet with Nutramar Tigrio Bottled Live Copepods, which are an ideal food for this fastidious feeder. Over time, as it becomes accustomed to its new surroundings, the Red Banded Pipefish will be content eating nonliving food such as frozen CYCLOP-EEZE®, very small frozen Mysis, Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp, and Nutramar Ova. The Ocean Rider Red Banded Pipefish are trained to eat frozen Mysis as their staple diet, and they will do so in your home aquarium, as long as the Mysis are small enough.

When it comes to prepared foods for your pipefish, stick with the smallest brands of frozen Mysis (e.g., Mini Mysis by H2O Life), Instant Baby Brine Shrimp by Ocean Nutrition, and perhaps bars of frozen Cyclop-Eeze for best results. Bars of frozen Cyclop-Eze usually work better than other forms of Cyclop-eeze because they will shed copious amounts of the bite-size frozen cyclops, but it's a messy food and I recommend offering your pipefish small frozen Mysis instead. Brands of larger frozen Mysis can also be used for feeding the pipefish, and hobbyists tell me that their red banded pipes can even handle the jumbo Piscine Energetics frozen Mysis relicta, looking a bit like a sword swallower in the process, as they gradually gulp down the king sized Mysis shrimp in several bites. But the brands of bigger frozen Mysis often work better after they have been minced or shaved. The frozen Mysis that works best for most hobbyists when minced is Hikari in frozen blocks rather than trays. The Hikari Mysis is much smaller than Piscine Energetics Mysis relicta and that makes it easier to shave off bite-sized pieces for the pipefish.

When it comes to shaving the Mysis, a technique that works well for many home hobbyists is to use a potato peeler to shave off bits of the Hikari Mysis from a frozen block, and then use a single edged razor blade to further mince the frozen bits the potato peeler has removed.

Small, frequent feedings are best. Try to feed your pipefish at least three times daily and be careful not to overfeed at any single feeding, especially with the frozen Cyclop-eeze, which tends to be messy because significant amounts of it go uneaten.

As we discussed briefly earlier, there is another type of prepared food that is bite sized and which the red banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) usually eat very readily. It is called Instant Baby Brine Shrimp and is manufactured by Ocean Nutrition. It consists entirely of sterile newly hatched baby brine shrimp that have been preserved for use as a fish food, and seahorse keepers tell me that dwarf seahorses (Hippocampus zosterae) and pipefish typically eat the Instant Baby Brine Shrimp very well.

As you know, the pipefish love to eat live newly hatched brine shrimp, so it makes sense that they will also like these perfectly preserved, intact baby brine shrimp as well, and one of the neat things about them is that the Instant Baby Brine Shrimp are buoyant so they stay suspended in the water column, which is exactly where the pipefish like to feed, rather than settling down to the bottom of the tank quickly, like the frozen Mysis does.

Likewise, reefkeepers tell me that their live corals absolutely love the stuff, and that the instant baby brine shrimp remain suspended in the water column fairly long in reef tanks with brisk circulation. (They also caution that it is very concentrated and easy to overfeed, if you're not careful.) Other hobbyists report that small, active fish -- especially planktivores -- also take to it very well.

In short, if you have any difficulty locating Marine Mini Mysis by H2O Life, I suggest that you obtain some of the Instant Baby Brine Shrimp by Ocean Nutrition and carefully offer it to your new pipefish in an area of the aquarium where it will not be sucked up by the filters before the pipefish get a chance to eat it. Here is some more information about this product that you may find the helpful, Lora:


Ocean Nutrition "Instant Baby Brine Shrimp"

Ingredients: 100% baby brine shrimp (Artemia nauplii)

* Use as food during the first stages of many delicate fishes and for invertebrates
* Brine shrimp immediately ready when your fry need it
* As natural as if you had hatched your own baby brine shrimp



Identical to freshly hatched Brine Shrimp - your fish will never know the difference! Ideal for delicate fish, fish fry, and invertebrates. Stays buoyant for longer feeding time. A convenient alternative to cumbersome and time-consuming brine shrimp hatching systems. For freshwater and marine fish. 100% baby brine shrimp (Artemia nauplii).

Once again, Ocean Nutrition is leading the innovation wave by introducing a revolutionary food concept: Instant Baby Brine Shrimp.

Baby Brine Shrimp (nauplii of Artemia salina) are widely used in the aquarium hobby as food during the first stages of many delicate fishes and as food for many invertebrates.

Until today, there has been little or no progress in the use of Baby Brine Shrimp in the hobby. The whole process of hatching the brine shrimp cysts at home is cumbersome, noisy, and messy. More often than not, not everybody in the household is pleased with the setup. Also, for reasons typically due to sub-optimal storage and handling of the cysts, many of the hatching results are often extremely low. The hatching takes 24 hours and it can be a problem to match this timing with the moment the fry need their first meal.

This is all over now. Ocean Nutrition has developed the Instant Brine Shrimp, a revolutionary product that allows you to use Brine Shrimp when and where you need them. The product consists entirely of sterile newborn nauplii in a water solution. Nothing else has been added, no preservatives or colorants. The product is natural, as if you would have hatched the Brine Shrimp yourself.

The product can be kept and stored at room temperature for many years, as long as the container is not opened. Once open, the product needs to be kept cool in the refrigerator and can be kept for up to 6 weeks, like the Baby Brine Shrimp you would have hatched yourself. The packaging of the product has a metal cover clearly showing whether or not the product has been opened, to avoid any surprise. It contains a net weight of over 20g (0.7 oz.) drain weight, or in excess of 1.5 million nauplii.


Okay, that's the rundown on the Instant Baby Brine Shrimp by Ocean Nutrition. It should work well for your new red banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) but use it sparingly because it's very easy to overfeed.

If it's not available from any of your local fish stores, you can purchase the Ocean Nutrition "Instant Baby Brine Shrimp" online from Drs. Foster and Smith for a cost of about $10 from the following website (just copy the following URL, paste it in your web browser, and press the "Enter" key, and will take you directly to the right webpage for the Instant Baby Brine Shrimp:

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...m?pcatid=16873

In the meantime, the best frozen Mysis that I have found for feeding the red banded pipefish is Marine Mini Mysis by H2O Life, so perhaps you can obtain some of the Mini Mysis from one of the local fish stores or pet shops in your area, while you are waiting for the Instant Baby Brine Shrimp to be delivered.

If you cannot obtain the H2O Life Marine Many Mysis locally either, then try to leave the heads of the frozen Mysis you already have a complete and intact when you cut it up for the pipefish, and offer the pipefish the anterior ends or pieces of the chopped up Mysis that include the eyes, because the head with the eyes is quickly recognized by pipefish and seems to trigger their feeding instinct.

Aquarium Decor:

A well-planted "Fish-Only-with-Live-Rock" (FOWLR) seahorse setup or seahorse-safe reef tank is the ideal habitat for the Red Banded Pipefish. Plenty of live rock, lots of macroalgae, colorful artificial corals, or seahorse-safe soft corals are all very appropriate forms of decor. Is In the wild, these pipefish can be found swimming under rocky overhangs, corals, or close to the floor of its reef habitat, and in the aquarium they will appreciate live rock arrangements that form caves, arches, and overhanging ledges. (Pipefish will often swim upside down along the roof of a cave or overhang.)

In a tank with lots of live rock and a thriving pod population, you may sometimes see the red banded pipefish slithering along the bottom of the tank in a very serpentine fashion, as it hunts for copepods and amphipods in all the nooks and crannies in the rockwork.

And in an aquarium with tall plants and tall hitching posts, such as artificial gorgonians, the pipefish may adopt a vertical, tail-up, head-down microflora posture and sidle up alongside the branches of the plants or gorgonians in an effort to simulate their surroundings, the better to ambush unsuspecting prey.

So, depending on the aquascaping in your aquarium, you will see your pipefish displaying a number of different behaviors – crawling along the bottom, snakelike while hunting pods; orienting themselves alongside in amidst vertical structures in the tank, tail up and head downwards, hoping to ambush unsuspecting prey; in addition to darting about horizontally like miniature torpedoes when snatching prey from the water column with lightning speed.

Tank Conditions:

The Red Banded Pipefish is a tropical species that does best at water temperatures between 72°F-77°F. The Ph balance of the water should also be maintained between 8.1 and 8.4 as they prefer alkaline content of the water to be high (dKH 8-12). The specific gravity should be maintained ideally between 1.020-1.025. Strive to provide them with multiple cave-like structures or overhangs in a well-planted aquarium with lots of colorful macroalgae that simulates their natural habitat and provides shelter for abundant population of copepods and amphipods.

Compatible Tankmates:

Red Banded Pipefish born and raised at the High-Health Ocean Rider aquaculture facility make ideal companions for large tropical seahorses such as Mustangs and Sunbursts (Hippocampus erectus). Otherwise, be sure to stick with seahorse-safe tankmates for your pipefish. Small, shy fish that are deliberate feeders such as small gobies, mandarins or dragonets, and firefish are best. Avoid aggressive, territorial fish and fast-moving fish that will outcompete the pipefish at feeding time. Seahorse-safe soft corals are fine but avoid anemones and stony corals with stinging tentacles.

Courtship and Breeding:

After an elaborate courtship dance, the female Red Banded Pipefish will attach her adhesive eggs to the flat area on the underside of the male's trunk (known as the brood patch). Pairs of these pipefish will mate regularly in the aquarium if well fed and provided with optimum water quality.

Flagtail pipefish, such as Ocean Rider's red banded pipes (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) are very difficult to sex unless they are actively breeding. Male pipefish do not possess a pouch of any sort; rather, when they mate, the female deposits her eggs on the ventral surface of the male in a certain area known as the brood patch, which the adhesive eggs adhere to readily. The male pipefish thus protects the eggs by carrying them with him everywhere he goes, exposed on his underbelly, until a newborn pipefish emerge from the eggs and swim off on their own.


Ocean Rider banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) carrying eggs on its brood patch. As shown here, and it is only when they are actively breeding and carrying eggs that one can accurately determine the gender of pipefish. Photo by Dr. Randy Morgan.

Unfortunately, the brood patch of a male pipefish is not at all evident when they are not actively breeding, and it can be very difficult to identify the sexes unless the male happens to be carrying eggs at the moment. Unlike seahorses, it is not easy to determine gender in pipefish, but mature males typically have a flattened appearance due to the brood patch during the breeding season, while females are more rounded in cross section or rotund in circumference.

Like the seahorses, Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus pipefish are livebearers and give birth to independent babies that are miniature replicas of themselves, except that the newborn pipes are totally transparent. They look like glass splinters or tiny transparent threads. The newborns can be raised using the same techniques for rearing seahorse fry but the aquarist needs to be diligent and Johnny-on-the-spot when rescuing the babies or the aquarium residents will make short work of them. (Like black mollies and swordtails, some pipefish parents will cannibalize their young.)

If you have a pair of red banded pipefish (Doryrhamphus dactyliophorus) that produce babies for you, I would suggest transferring the newborns to a "pinhole nursery tank" and starting them out and live rotifers and larval copepods as their first foods, as described below by Alex Cliffe, Senior Aquarist at the Zoological Society of London:


I managed to rear a similar species, Doryrhampus japonicus several years ago up to about 28 days but then I went away on holiday and the inevitable happened! When the fry hatched they were scuttling around on the surface and were about 6mm long (make sure there are no overflows on the parent tank!). I carefully transferred them to a 100 litre tank with all sides blacked out including the top with black bin bags. I made a small hole at the top and clipped a domestic bedside lamp to it to create a pillar of light (approx 2cm in diameter) down to the bottom. I fed them exclusively on rotifers enriched with a HUFA solution and when the rotifers were put into the tank they were attracted to the light and pretty much the entire density stayed within the range of the pillar of light which in turn attracted the fry over to feed. This minimised energy expenditure for the fry to swim around hunting for food which can be counterproductive in such a large volume in relation to their size. I managed to get them up to about 15mm long and at this point they started developing colouration on their caudal fin, it’s a shame I never got another chance to breed them again!

I am sure there are other techniques out there but this ‘Heath Robinson’ approach seemed to work for me!

Cheers
Alex Cliffe
Senior Aquarist, Aquarium
Zoological Society of London
Regent's Park
London NW1 4RY
email: alex.cliffe@zsl.org


Red Banded Pipefish are gregarious and this social species is best kept in mated pairs or groups of its own kind in an aquarium that is 30 gallons or larger.

Acclimation Procedures (make sure your aquarium is fully cycled!)

Please check that your basic water quality parameters are within acceptable range which are: Temperature range: 72°F-78°F, Ammonia 0, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 1-10ppm, pH 8.1-8.4, Specific gravity 1.022-1.025.

Acclimate your pipefish is slowly, just as you would acclimate seahorses, but do not take more than 30 minutes to complete the procedure. Open your box away from any bright lights. Check temperature and PH upon arrival in both the shipping water and in the tank. Turn off aquarium lights and follow this procedure :

1. Float the bag in your tank for about 10 minutes to equalize temperatures.
2. Partially open the bag and add 1 cup of tank water. (Do NOT aerate the shipping bag during acclimation)
3. Wait 10 minutes.
4. Remove 1 cup of water and add another cup of water from the tank.
5. Wait 10 minutes.
6. Repeat this procedure again.
7. Gently use your hand to transfer the seahorses or pipefish into the tank, discarding the water left in the bag.


Okay, Lora, that's the rundown on the new pipefish. They definitely do make terrific tankmates for Mustangs and Sunbursts, and your 75-gallon setup can safely support a couple of the pipefish along with a whole herd of ponies, if you wish. The pipefish are ideal for home hobbyists that are breeding and raising seahorses, in particular, since they are already culturing copepods and/or hatching out baby brine shrimp on a daily basis, which makes it a simple matter to feed the pipefish with some of their excess baby brine shrimp every day. But otherwise, you should be prepared to target feed the pipes with suitably small frozen Mysis, as previously described, at least until they get the hang of snatching Mysis from the feeding station by copying your ponies.

Best of luck with the new arrivals, Lora! Let me know if you have any interest in the seahorse training program and I would be very happy to help you go over all of lessons.

Happy Trails!
Pete Giwojna, Ocean Rider Tech Support

[fijisrfr]

Oppps! Shoulda researched BEFORE purchasing!

[BFG]

If you are feeding your fish with mysis, monitor your new purchase if it takes to mysid. Sometimes fishes will imitate what the other fishes are doing. Your mileage may vary.

[TamiW]

Try live brine shrimp, newly hatched brine shrimp, cyclopeeze and nutramar ova. Copepods might be taken if supplied in sufficient quantities, I. E. More than a tiny bottle with 20 or so that are sold at fish stores. Live mysis would be another option but can be difficult to obtain.

[mcardenas]

Thanks everyone .... I've had my pipefish one week already and he seems to be doing great. I feed him once a day. What I do is feed all my other fishes the pebbles then I feed my pipefish the frozen food and seems to be eating it. I see him swimming around at the tank nibbling at the rocks. To me he's doing good . I don't think it will be as hard as people say it will be.

[dkeller_nc]

You might want to consider feeding it at least a couple of times a day. Fish like this are constant browsers, and will do better if they have multiple smaller meals than one larger one.

One other suggestion: It's important to feed planktivores like pipefish, seahorses, etc... some degree of variety to ensure that they get a diet that has a complete fatty acid profile. Some foods, will have a preponderance of HUFA, but a deficit of LUFA, and others will have the opposite. So I would suggest feeding at least brine, mysis and copepods as an absolute minimum amount of variety. Fish, prawn and lobster eggs would be excellent supplements to the basic crustacean diet.

[FTDelta]

Heh - good luck to you then.

[igot2gats]

Originally Posted by thegrun

...this is an important question to ask BEFORE you make any livestock purchase.

This.

Consider it a lesson learned. Like stated above, it's a difficult fish that's not for beginners.

Take it to the LFS for credit, and either research a different fish before you buy, or get something you already know how to take care of.