Hello! pipefish newb! (image heavy!)

[Linne]

Hello all! I'm Linne *waves* and I am now the happy owner of five pipefish and have almost no idea what I'm doing yay.

So bit of backstory, I live on Galveston island and work at a lab that raises cephalopods. For our baby cuttlefish we collect live food from the area and on our last collecting trip caught a whole bunch of young Gulf and Louissiana pipefish. Not wanting them in our system, it was suggested that they be preserved and put in a jar somewhere since they look cool. I, however, am a sucker for cute things and went and looked up pipefish care, got myself supplies and after two weeks took the little guys home. Luckily I've been getting a LOT of help from a coworker who raises coral and owns a couple reef tanks already.
So I now have three Louisiana Pipefish and two Gulf pipefish. Three of them are juveniles (about 3-5 inches) and are together with two cleaner shrimp in a 10-gallon tank. I also have two little guys (two inches max).

Of course it was AFTER getting these guys that I found that pipefish are only reccomended for very experience aquarists, and that the WORST thing to do is have wild-caught fish since they like live food. Fortunately my job provides me with TONS of available live mysids, and I know how to catch them on my own. I've also got frozen mysids, frozen brine shrimp, and frozen cyclops and after one week of training they finally started eating frozen mysids this morning (yay!)
I moved the two youngsters into a 3-gallon tank since they're still on a mix of baby brine and cyclops (their food spread out too fast in the large tank) and they're all doing well, despite a baby-scare the first day (turns out one of the boys was pregnant, hoi).

I'm getting some macro-algae either later today or tomorrow and will be setting it up in there. Until then they seem to be happy with fake grass and hiding under various shells and rocks. So for the newbie, is there any advice to give? Anything I'm doing wrong so far? And what is this "feed station" I keep hearing about and how does it work for pipes?

Thanks!


-Linne

PS: nevermind on the Image Heavy. apparantly I can't put up pics yet. Oops!

[YLChik]

Welcome to TRT!!!!!!!!


WOW! Sounds like it's going to be an interesting ride, keep us updated on how it all works out for you!

It sounds like you have access to a lot of good information.
Seahorse.org is another good place to read up on pipes and seahorses. I have some experience with ponies, but none with pipes.

I think with them being wild caught you will want to read up on disease and have meds handy in case of emergency and keeping your tank temp down to 73-74 will also help keep them healthy!

[Linne]

Thanks! Keepin it cooler is pretty easy right now, it just stays room temp and I turn on the lights for a few hours to heat it up if need be.
Also was a bit hasty on proclaiming them trained. Just saw one of the older ones eat a frozen mysid and then spit it right back out! The brat. So far the only real excitement was coming in from class to find about 12 baby pipefish swimming around the main tank! Sadly they all died within two hours before I could get them into the nursery.

EDIT: What diseases would I be looking out for? And is there a general medicine to try em with or a diet supplement? Right now I'm using garlic supplements to help train them. Anything particular to suggest?