Pipefish are spawning

JeanR

Well-Known Member
BRS Member
I bought a male/female pair of blue stripe pipefish from Aquatic Treasures in Watertown about 4-5 months ago. I bought the male first and within a day realized how cool these guys are and went back to grab the female. They are together all the time and have been a great addition to my 30g mixed reef - fun to watch swim around hunting for copepods and interacting with the other fish.

To keep them I built a bottom feeder (a la @Paul B) and hatch baby brine shrimp clutches twice a week. Between new clutches I feed the baby brine spirulina so they can eat once they finish off their yolk sack. I add these baby brine to the feeder twice a day - I also feed the rest of the tank with frozen brine/mysis/krill/oyster twice a day, but don't see the pipefish eat that.

I was rewarded this week by seeing eggs deposited on the abdomen of the male (see photo).

I want to give a special thank you to @Paul B - between his posts on BRS, his articles on Reef2Reef and this book (The Avant-Garde Marine Aquarist - available on Amazon) it made keeping these pipefish very easy. Thanks, Paul! We are lucky to have you!

One issue I haven't been able to figure out is how to feed these guys when I am away on vacation. I've been lucky enough to have a friend able to come by and refill the feeder every day, as I'm not sure the pipefish can go all that long without feeding and I'm not sure my copepod population is high enough. Anyone have experience with this issue?


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You could buy some pods before you go on vacation and just overpopulate the tank or just have the sitter dump a bit of the pods in every few days
 
Cool on the spawning and success keeping them!

Can you hook up an Ato pump or doser to the baby brine or a pod bag that feeds to the makeshift feeder you have?




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Very cool fish. The fact that they're spawning is a testament to your care. When I had some, I was able to gradually ween them onto cyclops. Add the cyclops at the same time as the baby brine shrimp and they'll begin to associate both things as food.

They easily took nutramar Ova without any training. Frozen mysis never worked, neither did the refrigerated copepod or eggs.
 
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