easier / ideal pipefish to keep

[110galreef]

are certain species more likely to survive in the aquarium setting?

 

[namxas]

If you're looking for something that will tolerate your reef, I recommend the flagfins (genus Doryhamphus). Corythicthys (dragon-faced) pipes will also work, but are tuffer to feed due to their small snouts.

 

[coralnut99]

If your tank isn't too small, and the rock is very mature a dragon face can do very well as will the diminutive african blue stripe. Over the years, I've had the greatest success with Janns' pipes in eating frozen.

 

[110galreef]

The tank is a 250g reef tank. about 150# dry live rock. So I'd say pretty large. It has been running for a yr now. Would that be plenty established for these?

 

[coralnut99]

Without seeing the rock, and knowing that it started as dry rock I would say it's too early. That's not a definitive answer obviously. The Blue stripe and dragon face pipes feed on such small organisms it's not the kind of thing that's quantifiable at all. Is there a refugium connected to the display?

 

[110galreef]

No fuge....I do however feed the tank with the tiny filter foods and whatnot for the corals as well. Granted it is only 2x's a week. (zooplantktos, reef roids, coral frenzy and cyclopees home mix)

But i typically feed Rods food, which also contains oyster egges and cyclops and small stuff.

I will probably wait a few more mos to order anything, but trying to get my facts in line

 

[namxas]

The best thing to do is wean your pipes while they're in QT, you have a lot more control over what happens, plus you can be sure they're getting some food in them.

 

[capecoral]

Good idea... training in the qt.

 

[110galreef]

i don't use QT for my fish. Seems like one more stressor that leads to demise of my fish.

 

[rayjay]

Well IMO, in the case of pipefish and seahorses, a Q tank will probably save a lot more grief than it will ever cause.

 

[NarnyTheGreat]

Well IMO, in the case of pipefish and seahorses, a Q tank will probably save a lot more grief than it will ever cause.

Not to hijack but I'm curious.
I too am often hesitant to QT due to stress and losses. Normally I opt for fresh water dips with Ph adjustment.

Would this be hard on the seahorses/pipefish?

 

[NarnyTheGreat]

Just to add... All of the sea horses I am looking into are tank bred because they are more hardy and tend to already be trained on live foods.

 

[rayjay]

IMO the Q tank is a plus with pipe fish and with seahorses because of their inherent problems so often encountered in keeping them.
First of all, when you bring the fish home, it is already stressed so the placement of the pipe fish/seahorse in a Q tank at this time is not really adding to the stress, but it certainly can be an aid in determining if you are going to have an early problem with the fish as in an eating problem or possibly a disease problem.
As for using a Q tank after you've had the fish for a period of time, and it has developed a problem, many times the problem's first step will be to do a 12 minutes fresh water dip matching pH and temperature so placing the fish in the Q tank after that is not to be more stressful than the dip already effected.

For me, true captive bred seahorses/pipe fish are the way to go as they have been raised in either water mixed with commercial salts or in ocean water properly treated and filtered for pathogens.
Tank raised to me are the seahorses that are raised in cement tanks, (or in net pens) using ocean water that is insufficiently treated and filtered to remove the pathogens and usually these are Asian sourced seahorses that are siphoned off from seahorses being raised for the Asian medicine trade.
The advantage they have over wild caught is that they have usually been trained to eat frozen foods. They will be cheaper than true captive bred but not as successful to keep.
I have only seen one reference to captive bred pipe fish recently so most of them are wild caught.
Unfortunately, unless you can verify the source of the seahorses sold by your LFS, you may buy what you think are true captive bred but in fact may be tank raised.

 

[NarnyTheGreat]

IMO the Q tank is a plus with pipe fish and with seahorses because of their inherent problems so often encountered in keeping them.
First of all, when you bring the fish home, it is already stressed so the placement of the pipe fish/seahorse in a Q tank at this time is not really adding to the stress, but it certainly can be an aid in determining if you are going to have an early problem with the fish as in an eating problem or possibly a disease problem.
As for using a Q tank after you've had the fish for a period of time, and it has developed a problem, many times the problem's first step will be to do a 12 minutes fresh water dip matching pH and temperature so placing the fish in the Q tank after that is not to be more stressful than the dip already effected.

For me, true captive bred seahorses/pipe fish are the way to go as they have been raised in either water mixed with commercial salts or in ocean water properly treated and filtered for pathogens.
Tank raised to me are the seahorses that are raised in cement tanks, (or in net pens) using ocean water that is insufficiently treated and filtered to remove the pathogens and usually these are Asian sourced seahorses that are siphoned off from seahorses being raised for the Asian medicine trade.
The advantage they have over wild caught is that they have usually been trained to eat frozen foods. They will be cheaper than true captive bred but not as successful to keep.
I have only seen one reference to captive bred pipe fish recently so most of them are wild caught.
Unfortunately, unless you can verify the source of the seahorses sold by your LFS, you may buy what you think are true captive bred but in fact may be tank raised.

I meant frozen foods sorry about that. I recently saw a captive bred (the different terms always confuse me) pipefish from live aquaria in the divers den section, but that was the first one I had ever seen. As far as sea horses go, how do you know which are true captive bred or tank raised? For example live aquaria says they have tank bred Hippocampus kuda that come from Australia but they also have Hippocampus cf kuda which comes from Sri Lanka. Should one assume that they are all tank raised in the manner in which you stated? Or do they tend to label them accurately so we would know the difference?

Once again I dont mean to hijack. It just seemed to fall inline with the OP.

 

[namxas]

The SH from Oz are likely from a commercial breeder, altho SH Australia either went out of biz or was sold. Mic Payne over there used to breed a couple of flagfin species, BTW (IIRC, he retired or simply got out of it).

I'd steer clear of the SH from Sri Lanka...I know there's one facility of "TR"/"TB" SH from SE Asia that's supposed to be pretty decent, but I don't recall which one.

From what I've read, ORA was breeding banded pipes, but I dunno about their availability.

 

[rayjay]

Another problem with kuda is you don't really know what you are getting these days as so many get shipped as kuda but in fact are something different.
Seahorsesource.com is raising a kuda related species now and they should be coming up for sale in another month or two I would imagine.
Seahorse Sanctuary was for sale for a long time but ended up closing when he was unable to find a buyer for it so there are no seahorses coming from there.
Seahorse Australia list kuda as one of their cultured seahorses, although they do sell some wild caught species of seahorse as well, so the Australian kuda may come from there and would be good.
Oceanarium also lists kuda for sale but I suspect they buy from Seahorse Australia.
Sri Lankan kuda's would not be good as they are not bred and raised at Aquamarine International. These would almost certainly be tank raised by other companies.
The only GOOD seahorses from Sri Lanka are the reidi and comes from A.I..
As for Divers Den, the only way I think they would be likely to have captive bred pipe fish would be if they are selling some of what ORA is reported to be breeding.
The DO list ORA clowns so it's definitely possible.
I don't know of any way to verify whether or not a pipe fish/seahorse is tank raised or true captive bred without the seller providing the information and a way to contact the breeder for confirmation.
As for confusion it is definitely getting worse.
When I first started looking into the hobby in 02, it was wild caught or net pen raised so anything truly aquacultured properly was referred to as tank raised.
Then they started raising them in large cement tanks so now the tank raised term becomes problematic.
The term true captive bred gets used more now for the good ones but still some of the sites like seahorsecorral.com list theirs as tank raised but I would call theirs true captive bred to distinguish from the cement tank ones.
The unfortunate part about it all is that there are trans shippers and retail outlets that either don't know what they are selling, or they outright lie in order to get the sales.
I hope I haven't confused you even more.

 

[NarnyTheGreat]

Another problem with kuda is you don't really know what you are getting these days as so many get shipped as kuda but in fact are something different.
Seahorsesource.com is raising a kuda related species now and they should be coming up for sale in another month or two I would imagine.
Seahorse Sanctuary was for sale for a long time but ended up closing when he was unable to find a buyer for it so there are no seahorses coming from there.
Seahorse Australia list kuda as one of their cultured seahorses, although they do sell some wild caught species of seahorse as well, so the Australian kuda may come from there and would be good.
Oceanarium also lists kuda for sale but I suspect they buy from Seahorse Australia.
Sri Lankan kuda's would not be good as they are not bred and raised at Aquamarine International. These would almost certainly be tank raised by other companies.
The only GOOD seahorses from Sri Lanka are the reidi and comes from A.I..
As for Divers Den, the only way I think they would be likely to have captive bred pipe fish would be if they are selling some of what ORA is reported to be breeding.
The DO list ORA clowns so it's definitely possible.
I don't know of any way to verify whether or not a pipe fish/seahorse is tank raised or true captive bred without the seller providing the information and a way to contact the breeder for confirmation.
As for confusion it is definitely getting worse.
When I first started looking into the hobby in 02, it was wild caught or net pen raised so anything truly aquacultured properly was referred to as tank raised.
Then they started raising them in large cement tanks so now the tank raised term becomes problematic.
The term true captive bred gets used more now for the good ones but still some of the sites like seahorsecorral.com list theirs as tank raised but I would call theirs true captive bred to distinguish from the cement tank ones.
The unfortunate part about it all is that there are trans shippers and retail outlets that either don't know what they are selling, or they outright lie in order to get the sales.
I hope I haven't confused you even more.

I think you actually cleared it up pretty well. Though I may forget and confuse the two again later lol.

I still currently have an octopus in my tank so it will be a while before I move forward.

Currently the tank is set up for macro/octopuses so other than working out the different flow and reworking the rock I dont foresee any major changes needed.