sickman
Premium Member
In my efforts to combat my "red bugs" I have made 2 purchases of "dragon face pipefish" over the last 18 months. The first batch I recieved "Type A" and last week I got "Type B" as pictured below:
Type "a"'s have a much smaller and rounder head with eyes that are bigger in porportion to the rest of their head. Type "A" Dragonfaces also have red tipped dorsal fins and in general their patterens on the body and head have alot more color and contrast than type B's. Type B's are about 2 - 3x larger, much fatter and have longer heads and alot less color and no red tints on their dorsal fins.
I have had "Type A"'s for 18 months and out of the original 4, there are still 2 left, because I don't have a fuge and not many visible copapods, I assumed they would have no choice but to eat the red bugs on my acros. Over the last year of observing them, I would say they spend 95% of their time on the bottom of my tank in my sand/rubble bed. The couple times I have seen them up near my acros at the top of the rockwork they never once picked at anything on the acros, they completely ignored red bug infested acros! Even the colonies on the sandbed covered in so many redbugs they were readily visible to the naked eye, a Dragonface would completely swim over and pick something out of the sand, would never touch them at all.
I assumed I had so many red-bugs that there were enough of them in my sand/rubble bed for the Dragonfaces to live off of, and over the past year they eat red bugs at the same pace the redbugs reproduce, so there's a perfect harmony and the Dragonfaces never need to touch the bugs on my acros.
So this purchase I hoped would be different and so far, same results, peices of acros covered in redbugs go completely ignored, even peices that are covered placed in the sandbed!! I don't get it!! I 100% know that I have redbugs, here's a closeup of them:
These are the ones on the sandbed the dragonfaces completely ignore!! If they supposedly eat redbugs how the heck is it possible they show no interest in that redbug covered acro? They swim right past it never give it a second look!!
Type "a"'s have a much smaller and rounder head with eyes that are bigger in porportion to the rest of their head. Type "A" Dragonfaces also have red tipped dorsal fins and in general their patterens on the body and head have alot more color and contrast than type B's. Type B's are about 2 - 3x larger, much fatter and have longer heads and alot less color and no red tints on their dorsal fins.
I have had "Type A"'s for 18 months and out of the original 4, there are still 2 left, because I don't have a fuge and not many visible copapods, I assumed they would have no choice but to eat the red bugs on my acros. Over the last year of observing them, I would say they spend 95% of their time on the bottom of my tank in my sand/rubble bed. The couple times I have seen them up near my acros at the top of the rockwork they never once picked at anything on the acros, they completely ignored red bug infested acros! Even the colonies on the sandbed covered in so many redbugs they were readily visible to the naked eye, a Dragonface would completely swim over and pick something out of the sand, would never touch them at all.
I assumed I had so many red-bugs that there were enough of them in my sand/rubble bed for the Dragonfaces to live off of, and over the past year they eat red bugs at the same pace the redbugs reproduce, so there's a perfect harmony and the Dragonfaces never need to touch the bugs on my acros.
So this purchase I hoped would be different and so far, same results, peices of acros covered in redbugs go completely ignored, even peices that are covered placed in the sandbed!! I don't get it!! I 100% know that I have redbugs, here's a closeup of them:
These are the ones on the sandbed the dragonfaces completely ignore!! If they supposedly eat redbugs how the heck is it possible they show no interest in that redbug covered acro? They swim right past it never give it a second look!!
