Freshwater Pipefish

[RussGB]

Ok, does anyone know anything about these guys? Anything....

I looked online and can find very little...

Are they really peaceful?

Do they eat frozen or flake food?

How many should I keep together?

If I can't find answers I might just have to buy some and try them out, and then post my findings...

[guppymax]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

They are livebearers a lot like seahorses. The mother deposits the eggs in the father's pouch. They are fertilized internally. Daddy carrys the eggs around until they hatch and he gives birth. Super cool! Here is a link to get started:

http://www.seahorses.de/pipefish.htm

max

[RussGB]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

Ok, so a great experience at FRII. Young bloke there was super helpful. I came away with a M/F pair of FW Pipefish. And a bunch of other stuff....

I really like this shop. Fish looked real nice and they had stuff I have never seen in any of the other shops before....

I'll post up here on my experiences with the pipes...

[RussGB]

Update - Freshwater Pipefish

One day in and so far so good. They appera to be quite comfortable in my tank. They are very curious, looking at everything in the tank. You can barely see their fins moving, they just seem to glide. Their faces are just like seahorse faces.

They ate daphnia within 2 hours of going in. Trouble is I don't have that many daphnia. I am going to try brineshrimp, hoping they hatch in time, and also start training over to frozen and maybe dried food....

I really like these guys. I hope it all goes well, but there is so little out there on keeping these guys....

[guppymax]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

I have scuds if you want to try that. You could also try mosquito larvae. Maybe frozen mysis shrimp, brine shrimp or bloodworms but go easy on the bloodworms. PhishPhreek posted some information about fairy shrimp eggs over in the HLA website. What did they say about food where you bought them. Do you know which kind of pipefish you got? Pictures would be really fun?

max

[Mzungu]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

I agree, if you can get some pictures of your guys that would be great! I'm interested in learning what your experiences are with them.

[RussGB]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

Well I spent some time yesterday trying to take pictures. They are a (EDIT) to photograph. I had a nice 80-300 zoom which does macro between 200 and 300. This is on a digital rebel with a really good flash which does macro.

I snapped maybe 30 shots and so far they are all (EDIT)!

The pipefish continue to do well. They like the live daphnia and the brine shrimp, but they also appear to be eating the dried daphnia too!

Guppymax - I would love to try scuds. Do you breed them? Are they easy? I may have to find a way to hatch brine shrimp in much bigger quantities...

So in the absence of pics, let me try to describe what these guys look like:

They are a pale golden yellow color, and about 5" or 6" long. They appear to have an almost tie-dyed pattern of rings which are just a tiny bit darker than their main color. One appears to occassionally seem to have a small red flash low down at the rear. The eyes also sometimes seem red or pink.

[guppymax]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

The scuds are outside in a plastic half barrel eating green water. My girl friend threw out some spinach a while back and of coarse that ended up in there. They are no maintenance! If you like I can bring you some to the HAS auction. I am bringing some for some one already but I don't remember who. Hopefully they will remind me.

If this camera ia like mine the Tv mode with a shutter speed of 160 might work. My lense is 18-55 zoom though. The lighting has to be right.

Do the males have pouches that you can see?

max

[RussGB]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

I might try my smaller zoom since these guys are quite long, and that'll enable a faster speed. I had the ISO setting to 1600 with the big lens....

I haven't really looked for a pouch opening. I got two of them, and I am thinking of getting another two if these guys do okay. I tried to get a pair, but not sure if I was successful.....

I will likely not be able to make the HAS auction. Its a busy month for me.  But... I like the idea of having scuds.

[GatorRock]

Re: Freshwater Pipefish

Heya all-

Just thought I'd add in my experience...

So I've had a freshwater pipefish for almost a year ( and could be damning myself just by writing this).  love the little fish-

Very unique, but can be very hard to keep stable.  I've had 3 and only this one has survived this long.  I bought 2 originally and within 1 month one died.  I waited for 3 months until I purchased a new one and with in 3 weeks that one died.  The other has thrived- brilliant yellow and stubborn as hell- ONLY will eat live brineshrimp- tried daphnia- nope, frozen bloodworms, brine shrimp, and others- all nope.  Can't find any live bloodworms in town anymore (city pets used to sell them)- so don't know there.

The main reason i'm writing this is because what has happened recently- very upsetting to me.

I have decided to re-scape my tank.  This I know can be upsetting to fish and expected a short scared period from them.  Which happened witht he first leg of the re-scaping process- except the pipefish has yet to return to normal- and by this I mean- after I removed much of the overgrowth of plants in my tank- he/she has turn a dark brown.  I figured this might have been to try and camouflage itself with the filter pipe. So I added back some plants from a different tank to give the pipe hiding area until my new plants arrive- he/she still hasn't gone back to the beautiful yellow it normally is.  

Being that this fish is so shy right now, I don't know that I can get a good pic- I'll try and update after I re-scape my tank this weekend and see what happens then.

I also want to add another pipefish again but waiting until I've got the tank balanced again.

But just wanted to let people know what I have exprienced to this point.