bluestripe pipefish pair.

lost my female today :( been fighting to get her to eat enough since i got them. But the male is eating like a champ and doing great swimming around the tank. been feeding BBS and pods because his mouth is so small.
 
Right after I posted my response above I got a good look at my blueface for the first time in a long time, and I would swear I saw snout bumps. So maybe I have a male now after all.

I've never heard of pipefish changing sex, but maybe if left alone long enough they eventually will. Then again maybe she got a snout full of bristle worm?

On a related note, last week I saw my female actually eat a tiny bristle worm that fell off my magnet cleaner. I was amazed she ate it, and a little worried she didn't know what she was doing, but she seems to be okay.

you must have got a new camera thumbsy
Actually, I found an old digital nikon I had. Oddly this cheap camera has automatic white balance, which my more expensive olympus doesn't. And the flash is better too.

lost my female today :( been fighting to get her to eat enough since i got them.
Sorry to hear the bad news. I tried once to get my guys to eat adult brine and neither would even give it a taste. My male actually got freaked out by the odd movement of the swarm of adult shrimp and dashed into the rock work. He's always been a little more cowardly then the female. I assume it's cause he's the one carrying the eggs, so it's not just his life he's worried about...then again maybe i'm over thinking it and he's just a wimp.
 
I've never heard of pipefish changing sex, but maybe if left alone long enough they eventually will. Then again maybe she got a snout full of bristle worm?

I know it's weird, but they're definitely bumps, not bristles. They look like the front fish in this picture:

tandcrump.jpg
 
got a male blue stripe two weeks ago.. had my female for about 6 months.. and this morning my male has a skinflap on his belly and behaviour has changed..
I think he is pregnant!!!!

tank is moving towards a miracle mud no skimmer with refugium system.. full of sps. So, at the moment i have no intend to get a small tank for the babies, but hopefully the fuge will help them as it's teaming with life!!!..

Have you guys got any ideas?
 
Time for an update I guess.

Shortly after my last post my female neon pygmy goby started losing her fins. It's the same thing that happened to the male, but much slower. It started as a couple of bites, but eventually all their fins were gone. She managed to hold on about a week before she finally disappeared. I'm wondering if I have some predator like a euclid worm.

About two months ago I picked up a pink streaked wrasse. He was very shy at first but eventually settled in. I think the pipefish brought him out of his shell, and within a couple weeks he was coming out to feed, though he's not brave enough to come all the way up to the pipette.

Sorry for the blurry pic. The new fish next to a pipefish for reference.
DSCN1463-2.jpg


About a month ago I finally found a LFS carrying nutramar ova. My female immediately took to it, and as usual the male ignored it. I started mixing the ova and bbs together and finally last week the male started eating ova as well.

So, I thought I was out of the woods. I went a whole week without any BBS at all. Both pipes were aggressively eating mysis and ova. My female was especially hungry, which I guess really should've been a tip off.

Last night after a water change I noticed my female wasn't able to steady herself in the current. I isolated her in a small net breeder but by the morning she was dead. The night before she looked a little thin, but she ate quite a bit of mysis so I thought it would be okay. As I looked her over I noticed a large chunk of her tail was missing. About the same size and shape as the bites in my gobies fins when they started to die off.

So at this point I'm not really sure what did her in. I'm guessing a combination of being weak from the lack of bbs, as well as some predator catching up to her and taking a bite out of her tail.

So, in in all she was with me since January 08, so 2 years and 10 months.
 
That's not a horrible stretch to have a bluestripe, especially since you have no idea how old she was when you got her. Sorry about your fish.
 
So after some research I'm pretty sure she died from fin rot. It appears to have spread to my male as well, but it's only just started.

Hopefully he can hang on until tommorrow when I can run out and buy some medicaiton and setup a hospital tank.
 
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