Help Blue stripe pipefish

fishoholic · #1 02-20-2008, 04:12 AM

Go to my last post (@ 6:41am) I need bubble info/help

Just wondering what everyones thoughts are. I bought a blue stripe pipefish (Doryrhamphus excisus excisus) today. He is about an inch and a half long and is now living in our 15g long frag tank. I have a mature sand bottom and few pieces of LR and I put some caulerpa in the tank for him. I have a korallia one running for flow and the lights are 250watt MH. I am aware that most won't eat frozen so no worries, as I do have a fuge in our sump from our 230g system that is full of pods, so hopefully that will help with feedings. I have read a lot of info on pipefish but I'm wondering about anyones personal experiences with them. Thanks Laurie

Snappy · #2 02-20-2008, 01:03 PM

I have had mine for 2.5 years and they are great. Easiest to care for pipefish out there IMO.

ponokareefer · #3 02-20-2008, 04:52 PM

I just picked one up as well. My 9 gallon nano was just crawling with pods, and now has been thinned out a little bit after 10 days. Does your's eat anything other than pods? I also have a large refugium, but it would be nice if it would eat something else.

fishoholic · #4 02-20-2008, 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snappy

I have had mine for 2.5 years and they are great. Easiest to care for pipefish out there IMO.

Great to know, I've only had mine for a day and I haven't seen him eat yet, what does yours eat?

fishoholic · #5 02-21-2008, 12:41 PM

I noticed what appears to be a small bubble under my pipefish's head. I'm thinking this is bad. I noticed a lot of bubbles in the frag tank (caused by a ciyano outbreak) so I moved the pipefish into our refugeium, hopefully he'll be better off in there. Is there anything else I should be doing for him, will I need to pop the bubble or would doing something like that make it worse? Any ideas would be appreciated.

naesco · #6 02-21-2008, 11:10 PM

They require the same conditions which is a species tank with only very peaceful fish as company.
They should not be attempted by hobbists unless they have these conditions.

Here is is the comment from wetwebmedia.com

Pipefish are even more difficult that wild seahorse to keep. As for Pipefishes, they're survivability is, if anything, even more dismal than wild-collected seahorses. They should only be attempted by folks in the know and of dead earnest. Reef-type set-ups with few or no competing fish tankmates are best for providing conditions conducive to their care. Various banded pipefishes, in the genera Dunckerocampus and Doryrhamphus are available from time to time mostly out of the Indo-Pacific. The creeping Pipefishes of the genus Corythoichthys are probably the most popular, best-lived forms, some known to have lived for months in well-established reef tanks. Some of the temperate species of Syngnathus, likewise have been kept and bred in aquarium confinement, as "species-tanks" by themselves.

fishoholic · #7 02-22-2008, 01:40 AM

I checked on him in our fuge (which has a sand bed, LR, cheato and caulerpa, barely any bubbles, and low flow in it) and he's swimming around in and out of the cheato and seems really happy. I looked closely at the cheato and there are lots of pods for him to eat, so hopefully he'll be ok. He wouldn't pose properly for me so I don't know if the bubble is still there or not.

oceanrider · #8 05-15-2008, 05:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Great to know, I've only had mine for a day and I haven't seen him eat yet, what does yours eat?

I had two Doryhamphus ( blue striped ) pipefishes in my 50 gallon mature reef tank.

I fed them initially with some juvenile (larger than baby) brine shrimp, which they took. But one of the pipefishes was really picking on the other smaller one, so much that later on it died and disappeared.

The remaining one lived well in the tank. HE would scrounge around, looking for small crustaceans, even though I did NOT have that much newer live rock and no noticeable copepod population. The reef tank had numerous mushrooms , soft corals, clam, etc....but he was the only fish...and he loved it.
I did not feed him with any brineshrimp or any new copepod source for over 8 months...and he was fine. You can see him scrounge around the back of the tank, looking for super small plankton/crustaceans...and then snapping at it.....

talk about easy to keep....just dump some copepods into a reef tank , and you are set.

BlueAbyss · #9 01-20-2009, 06:53 AM

Been doing some research on these guys as I will likely get a pair for my 20 gallon display, when I get it going finally. It seems that the hanging out under ledges and in quieter areas is a natural behaviour for these guys, so I plan to build some ledges into my tankscape for them, and there will be some seagrass for them to hang out in too.

They sure are cool fish, and beautiful too.

oceanrider · #10 01-20-2009, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueAbyss

Been doing some research on these guys as I will likely get a pair for my 20 gallon display, when I get it going finally. It seems that the hanging out under ledges and in quieter areas is a natural behaviour for these guys, so I plan to build some ledges into my tankscape for them, and there will be some seagrass for them to hang out in too.

They sure are cool fish, and beautiful too.

Great....

Just do not get two males , like I did. They are territorial and the stronger one will not tolerate a competitor.

Yes, they like ledges. My blue stripe pipefish came out to eat at all hours....and liked having the run of the tank.

advise anyone interested in keeping these, to have some rocks that have copepods or minishrimp on them, so they can restock the food source.

an occasional uncured live rock may be good also.

Once, I was scuba diving, and collected a small live rock, one small enough to close one's hand over it. I kept it in some seawater...but no airpump..Big mistake...cause in a few hours, all the live shrimp inside it were starved of oxygen and came out and died.....there were literally hundreds and hundreds of live crustaceans on any uncured live rock..

but of course, there can also be some parasites...or flame worms..

good luck...