AITA? Two pipefish Murder Mystery

[wherethewildthingsr]

Hey All,

Long time lurker on R2R and hobbyist for about five years. I’ll keep this short because I’m really just looking for a sanity check from other pipefish people.

I’ve kept pipefish on two separate occasions. Both times I had a mated pair. Both times the female died a weird mysterious death. The first female (dragon face) got a piece of sand stuck in her hyoid and choked.

Tonight, I just lost my banded pipefish female because her nose got caught in the rock work looking for pods.

Both tanks were podded to the max and then I replenished pods every two weeks. Tank is 30 gallons. Water parameters all normal. Coral all happy and healthy. Have an Austria eating filefish and a target mandarin. I also feed live enriched baby brine shrimp and feed the file fish mysis, etc. Have inflow and a small wave maker that they like to play in but no signs of mechanical injury.

Both times the male has been happy and healthy with no signs of disease or stress (that I can tell).

Question I’m asking is: am I putting these pipefish in a bad situation without knowing it? Or has this happened to anyone else? I know it’s hard to answer that without my setup, etc. but I’m really just sad about this and trying to figure out if this is just the cost of pipefish (like it can be with seahorses). Or if I should minimize the rock work or something?

Anyways, thanks y’all!

-S

 

[sixty_reefer]

Hey All,

Long time lurker on R2R and hobbyist for about five years. I’ll keep this short because I’m really just looking for a sanity check from other pipefish people.

I’ve kept pipefish on two separate occasions. Both times I had a mated pair. Both times the female died a weird mysterious death. The first female (dragon face) got a piece of sand stuck in her hyoid and choked.

Tonight, I just lost my banded pipefish female because her nose got caught in the rock work looking for pods.

Both tanks were podded to the max and then I replenished pods every two weeks. Tank is 30 gallons. Water parameters all normal. Coral all happy and healthy. Have an Austria eating filefish and a target mandarin. I also feed live enriched baby brine shrimp and feed the file fish mysis, etc. Have inflow and a small wave maker that they like to play in but no signs of mechanical injury.

Both times the male has been happy and healthy with no signs of disease or stress (that I can tell).

Question I’m asking is: am I putting these pipefish in a bad situation without knowing it? Or has this happened to anyone else? I know it’s hard to answer that without my setup, etc. but I’m really just sad about this and trying to figure out if this is just the cost of pipefish (like it can be with seahorses). Or if I should minimize the rock work or something?

Anyways, thanks y’all!

-S

It sounds like that you just have been unfortunate with bad luck, from what you described I don’t think there was nothing you could do to avoid the problem at hand.

 

[Submerge]

What is meant by podded to the max? 30 gallons with 3 pod eaters is going to be tough without daily pod additions. A single mandarin will eat over 5000 a day.

You can see my banded and Mandy there hunting around pod city which gets continual injection of pods and 3 kinds of phyto throughout the day. It’s tough to keep enough pods going with these guys eating seemly as many as I put in.

 

[sixty_reefer]

What is meant by podded to the max? 30 gallons with 3 pod eaters is going to be tough without daily pod additions. A single mandarin will eat over 5000 a day.

You can see my banded and Mandy there hunting around pod city which gets continual injection of pods and 3 kinds of phyto throughout the day. It’s tough to keep enough pods going with these guys eating seemly as many as I put in.

Off topic but did you bought pod city or is it something you made?

 

[Submerge]

Off topic but did you bought pod city or is it something you made?

It’s my design. Took 3.5 days to print lol. Happy to share if you are willing to put that much plastic into pod structure.

Phyto dosing from above in the fridge, pod farm below in the 20L green water tank. The lowboy overflows into a 40 where there is another mandarin and 4 seahorses. Everything gets fed all day long from this setup.

 

[sixty_reefer]

It’s my design. Took 3.5 days to print lol. Happy to share if you are willing to put that much plastic into pod structure.

Phyto dosing from above in the fridge, pod farm below in the 20L green water tank. The lowboy overflows into a 40 where there is another mandarin and 4 seahorses. Everything gets fed all day long from this setup.

I really like your design, and it looks effortless also once up and running, you should share this on a different thread as I’m sure many folks would love the STL for the pod city with dosing connection and the fridge.
It’s really impressive and innovative thinking

 

[Submerge]

I really like your design, and it looks effortless also once up and running, you should share this on a different thread as I’m sure many folks would love the STL for the pod city with dosing connection and the fridge.
It’s really impressive and innovative thinking

Thx. I’ve never even posted a tank thread! Slacker I guess. I’m building out my live food wall to increase production by about 10x right now. Maybe I’ll finally post a thread when I’m done with that.

Sorry for the thread Jack @wherethewildthingsr my point was these things will eat a lot more pods then we often give them credit for. It’s easy to starve them. Not sure if that’s what’s happening with you just food for thought.