So I have two multibanded red/yellow pipefish. I feed them live copepods and PE Mysis . They take both.
I caught one of them pooping , and the poop looked like a small filament , about 4 mm long, white , like partially digested mysis. . The poop drifted for just a few seconds before my tomato clown fish gobbled it up.
I guess this proves that pipefishes have short stomachs and cannot fully digest the shrimps that they eat, such that their excrement is ………… er……….. still edible for other fishes.
I guess that is also the reason they must eat constantly.
The tomato clown fish also harasses and makes dashes towards my pipefish, but he just evades them. Just a show of force, no real biting.
Another interesting thing I noticed, several times, was that this small 4 inch long, only a few mllimeters wide, pipefish, actually hunted and snapped at my much larger red stripped cleaner shrimp. I observed this several times....and found it funny, since the cleaner shrimp was maybe 6 times bigger than than the pipefish, and of course, could never fit in its mouth.
I caught one of them pooping , and the poop looked like a small filament , about 4 mm long, white , like partially digested mysis. . The poop drifted for just a few seconds before my tomato clown fish gobbled it up.
I guess this proves that pipefishes have short stomachs and cannot fully digest the shrimps that they eat, such that their excrement is ………… er……….. still edible for other fishes.
I guess that is also the reason they must eat constantly.
The tomato clown fish also harasses and makes dashes towards my pipefish, but he just evades them. Just a show of force, no real biting.
Another interesting thing I noticed, several times, was that this small 4 inch long, only a few mllimeters wide, pipefish, actually hunted and snapped at my much larger red stripped cleaner shrimp. I observed this several times....and found it funny, since the cleaner shrimp was maybe 6 times bigger than than the pipefish, and of course, could never fit in its mouth.