Anyone kept a bluestripe pipefish with no supplemental feeding?

[Tired]

I'm looking at upgrading to a tank in the 20-30 gallon range, and also looking at bluestripe pipefish. I know they can be fed entirely on pods grown in the aquarium, if your tank is large enough and is set up for a nice pod population. Has anyone on here kept a bluestripe pipefish (for at least a couple years) without giving it any supplemental foods, and if so, what was your setup like? 

[East1]

If you don't feed the pipefish directly you'd have to feed the tank instead, though something like EasyReef Booster (autodosed phytoplankton) might make enough food for it

[Tired]

That's what I've been doing with my pico. The tank gets some food now and then, the corals get food, the fish get fed treats maybe once a week, and between that and the light fueling algae, it grow plenty of pods for two pico fish to eat. I'd like to translate that concept to a larger tank, so I'm trying to do some research on what that would take to support a pipefish. (Alongside a couple of pico fish.)

 

I'm strongly considering that booster stuff. Seems like an excellent way to get copepods boosted. Definitely gonna have an autofeeder to add a tiny pinch of food for assorted critters to eat on. I also figure I'd stuff all the filter compartments with chaeto, maybe add a little in-tank 'fuge. It is a little trickier to feed the pipefish compared to pico gobies, since bluestripe pipefish can't really eat amphipods or munnid isopods like the gobies will, but it seems potentially doable in a lightly stocked 30gal. 

[jambon]

I did manage  to keep one in an 8 gallon biocube for a long time. I had a good pod population . I had a lot of gha which I was not too concerned about as it was supporting the pod population. I also kept a yasha goby with a randalls pistol shrimp in the tank. 

After some time the pipefish was also eating cyclopeaze freeze dried cyclops. 

   I could easily leave for a week without worrying about feeding the tank.

[Tired]

Oh, that's a much smaller tank than I would have thought would work. Cool. 

 

They do seem to be remarkably easy to get onto prepared foods, as pipefish go. I'm finding a decent number of people online who had theirs spontaneously start eating prepared food of its own accord. I wonder what auto-feeder-suitable products I could get one to take. Aside from, apparently, freeze-dried Cyclop-eeze.