pipefish care

[Banded pipefish]

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.

 

[cjm3]

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).

 

[Code4]

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

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

 

[ThRoewer]

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.

 

[rayjay]

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

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

 

[dodgerblew]

Reviving this thread. Can dusky and or gulf pipefish be kept in a reef tank or do they need more of a macro algae environment?