Pipefish Food?

[ChrisBuono]

I just bought two 'Many-banded pipefish - Doryrhamphus pessuliferus - Gelbband Seenadel' to put into my seahorse tank. I thought they would eat the same frozen mysis as the reidi. No luck so far.

Any suggestions?

 

[krazeekiddie]

Pipefishes are beautiful yet tricky beasts!

Most NEVER train to frozen & perish if not fed properly!

The best food would be Mysid shrimp that is alive, they are expensive though!!!! Sooooo a nice cheaper alternative would be live brine.

You do need to enrich it as it's nutritional value is rather low, & although you are feeding the pipe, it takes more energy to digest it than it actually recieves from it. A nice slow death! eeekkk!!

Buy some selcon & gut load those bad boys before feeding to your pipe. Also, they love amphipods & those are also really good for them. (Don't know what yoru tank population is) You can also buy them to seed your aquarium, but unless you have a refugium, it will be hard to keep the pod populations where you would need them to sustain your pipe.

I hope this helped in any way & good luck!! =)

 

[Pea-brain]

An LFS nerar me sells pipes and every one she sells she has trained to eat frozens. I have no idea how but she might tell you. Sadly she doesn't ship fish. Aquacorals.com

Dan

 

[krazeekiddie]

Wow, impressive actually!!! Most pipefish are WC, so to get them on frozen is a miracle. They are kind of like Mandarins, some take to frozen, but most just perish!

 

[ChrisBuono]

The Mandarin I have quickly took to Hykari bloodworms. Now he eats both bloodworms and frozen mysis. My CB reidi were from SeahorseSource.com, so they came eating frozen mysis.

My two new pipefish seem healthy. I've had them for about a week. They hunt side-by-side. I have a decent pod population, but probably not enough for them to survive without taking to frozen soon.

 

[krazeekiddie]

Be proactive & assume the worst then! I would start to look around for some pod cultures! As well as starting either brine grow out or finding a LFS who sells them. (I have seen the LFS have tubs of them)


Just make sure you enrich the brine with selcon or something similar.

I have seen my mandarin snick at my acans after I have fed mysis, I still just don't know if he was curious or actually eating it!

As mentioned the live mysis are expensive, but really the best for them.

Good Luck, I hope they take to frozen!!

 

[finsurgeon]

Try "Arctipods" by Reef Nutrition. Comes as a pink liquid with plankton in it, sized between brine and cyclops, and tending to foat around fairly long. I've had just about every kind of pipes take right after it. Many have graduated up to mysis or even PE mysis later, but survived at the beginning in my mixed reef off of the abundance of arctipods.

 

[philter4]

I have several pipes, all mine eat frozen mini mysis by H2O. I have blue stripes and red stripes that I collected (some in 2006 and the most recent in oct '07) I have them with other fish, and as they see the fish eating they learn that the mysis are food. So far I've only had them refuse food for about a week.