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Cultivated Reef

The Pipefish experiment


phergus_25

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And so it begins. I have thought that a pipefish would e a great fish because they stay on the bottom so in a tank with high flow on top, like mine, but the bottom is real slow then the pipefish will do well. I really wouldent hav bought one except for the fact that I found one for $20, same as liveaquaria.com, so I had to go for it. He seems really inquisitive and I saw him hunting for pods last night and he ate some mosquito larve when fed them. So I'm pretty hopeful. My question tho is what is the best way to ween them, probibly exactly like SHs but seahorses.org is down or somethign so I need some help. thanks

-greg

 

Not the best pics becuase the camera dosent pick up actinic well at all

pipefish.jpg

 

pff.jpg

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to ween them off live and onto frozen you have to slowly start adding frozen food to their live food mixture. we had a pair at my store that we lucked out with. wild caught, but they immediately took to eating frozen.

 

you've got a gorgeous specimen there...hopefully it does well.

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He seems really inquisitive, I fed him some mosquito larve out of a pipet and he took it, so I hope I could spit some mysis out of it and he might take it. Wish me luck. I know its a gamble but he was amazing and for $20 I had to.

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Beautiful. Try getting ahold of some live mysis, maybe. At least it's more nutritious than mosquito larvae, and would make it easier to "trick" him into eating the frozen (there's an obvious difference between white frozen mysis and black mosquito larvae).

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yea, I am going on thursday and see what I can get my hands on. what is that liquid vitiman type stuff that you soak them in, I could put whatever I feed him in with that.

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ok so I now have a shopping list.

Selcon

frozen mysis

any life clearish things i can get

 

I hope that him being small and having the tank to him self that he will only need the soof I give as that little extra as opposed to his main food source.

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haha my bad thanks.

 

A couple of updates, first being I forgot to tell the story of his few hours before being in my tank. I see him and decide to buy him, so the guys goes to catch him and he flys across the tank, fast. Next thing we know he is in the overflow box. Well we give it up for dead and I go to leave, we thought it had gone in the sump and pipefish + 4000 GPH and a couple big pumps = death. But the guy chased me down and said he was still in the overflow box so 30 min later he is in a bag and on the way to my tank. The store has a 7 day money back gaurantee so I figgured he would die sopn if he was going to. But after all that he is fine and seems good.

 

So after all that I think he needs a name, fist fish next to lucky a goldfish, but thats another story, so help me out on that.

 

As a update for today I sat a crab crawl next to him and touch him, so he simply does a nice tuck and roll and rolls over the crab and lands on the other side of him.

 

he also shows dark bands when irritated, like by the crab.

 

Well more tommorow after a LFS run.

-greg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sad day. My pipefish is MIA. I cleaned the tank really well and stuff, updates comin today later after pics, but never saw a sign of him. My mom said she hadent seen him all week. So my best guess it that he died from an intrnal injury from the LFS ordeal and then was consumed by the giant bristle worms that inhabit my tank. sad end to a short but sweet story

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firefishbrain

what a cool little guy! what kind of pipefish is he? good luck with weening it, I agree try to ween it by slowly adding frozen to the mixture, you could try brine shrimp too!? not an expert just a thought

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It's too bad he passed... They're pretty fickle like that. He was a beauty, alright.

 

firefishbrain, brine shrimp have very little nutritional value, so while he'd get fat on them, he'd be slowly starving to death from malnutrition.

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yea well hes gone, but he was amazing. I think I might try one later when I have time and $$$ to set up a pipefish only tank

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Yup...That's what prevents me from having pipefish or seahorses: the daily maintenance. I'm just not home enough. Maybe later on in life, you know?

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Yea exactly, I think I'm gonna add a Seio 620 to the tank and then the search begins for a lower maintnance but rare/cool fish. check out my thread for some updated pics and stuff.

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No prob, firefish. Many people don't. :flower:

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firefishbrain

thanx for telling me, that's one thing I have to change on my shopping list for supplies, best of luck, is that guy by himself or do you have others in there?

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