Pipefish or not?

[clownfitch]

I have a very well established soft coral 29 gallon biocube that has a pair of young ocellaris clowns and a lawnmower blenny. Plenty of live rock with crushed coral substrate. I am intrigued at the thought of adding one or two pipefish to the tank. I have done a lot of reading on the subject and find that normally these fish won't last more than a month or two unless they are getting regular feedings of live food. Are their certain types that have a better than average survival rate when in a reef tank setting where they are trained to feed on frozen foods rather than constant live food feedings?

 

[Squishie89]

I have 2 dragonface pipefish in my reef tank. They eat copepods and nutramar ova. I had a LFS get them to eat the frozen so I can't help you about training. But what you can do is start seeding the tank with pods. Do not get amphipods, they are too big. Just copepods. Tisbe are good and seem to be a favorite in my tank. You will know when you are ready when you have to clean the glass to get all the pods off. Better to have too many than too little.

 

[ReeferBean]

I have a very well established soft coral 29 gallon biocube that has a pair of young ocellaris clowns and a lawnmower blenny. Plenty of live rock with crushed coral substrate. I am intrigued at the thought of adding one or two pipefish to the tank. I have done a lot of reading on the subject and find that normally these fish won't last more than a month or two unless they are getting regular feedings of live food. Are their certain types that have a better than average survival rate when in a reef tank setting where they are trained to feed on frozen foods rather than constant live food feedings?

Hey I had an australian banded pipefish in my 120 for 2 years and finally it dissappeared but at the time i wasn't sure of their life expectancy. He or she ate frozen cyclops and mysis. Swam out into the current to feed and would do all its foraging at night . During the day it just chilled in the back of the tank for the most part unless it was feeding time. HTH

 

[clownfitch]

Thanks for the feed back guys. I'm going to work in beefing up the pod population and talk to my LFS about ordering one for me. The tank has been running for about 15 months so beefing up the pods should be relatively quick. Thanks again.