Banded Pipefish food?

[Bman10000]

Hey my name is Brandon and I am new to Reef Central. I work at Big Al's aquarium supercenter in Calgary. On Saturday I brought some freshly hatched brines in to try feeding a banded pipefish. He ate them like he hadn't eaten in months. Probably because he hasn't. They wouldn't ever take the time to hatch brines for 1 fish. There was 2 but one died probably due to starvation. Anyways I brought him home and he seems stress free in my 29 reef tank. I have been hatching brines for him daily and everyone in the tank seems to enjoy it. Are brines enough though? Is there a way to "gut load" them in a sense to be a better staple?

[rayjay]

A big problem with wild caught pipe fish is that they are not trained to eat frozen foods.
You can feed nhbbs but it's better to feed enriched ongrown bbs.
To do this you separate the newly hatched nauplii, putting them in new water after rinsing and let them go for a day while they transform into the second Instar stage where they will then have a complete digestive system. Until then, they can't eat.
Now, 24hrs after hatching, enrich them with whatever you are using and after 12 hours of this, replace the water and enrichment and go for another 24 hours.
They will be completely enriched by this time.
I personally use spirulina powder blended for two minutes and kept refrigerated in a pop bottle, but every 3rd or 4th feeding use Dan's Feed (from seahorsesource.com) again blended for two minutes and stored in a refrigerator.
Just add enough to cloud the water and add more as it clears. Too much at a time kills the brine. If you use selco or selcon for enrichment, you should also use something else like the spirulina in the blend because the selcos and selcons are basically providing fatty acids.
I buy my spirulina powder from Brine Shrimp Direct.
You can use spirulina flake food but it's more expensive and may take longer in the blender before the particles are micronized suitable for brine nauplii mouths.
Once you are sure it is healthy and eating well, start mixing some frozen nhbs brine shrimp to try to switch it to frozen foods. If it goes for that well, then chop up some mysis so pieces are appropriately sized for it's mouth and see if you can get it to eat that. It never hurts to still feed enriched live brine once or twice a week after getting it onto frozen food.

[Bman10000]

Sorry for the late reply! Anyways I can't seem to keep the brines alive long enough to grow out! What do you recommend?

[sportzfish]

Mine also eats frozen cyclopeeze.

[rayjay]

Well it took me a while to succeed also. You have to keep trying until you find a way that works for you as different people have succeeded in different ways.
My brine shrimp page may give you some ideas to try.
If you have access to greenwater (ie nannochloropsis) then use that for the first week or so of grow out.
What are you feeding them so far? What containers are you using? What measurement of cysts are you placing in how much water? Are you aerating with an open ended airline? What specific gravity?
Is Ryan still working in that store?

[Bman10000]

Im using an aqua medic in tank hatchery, salinity 1.025 ish. I was using a jar but i had'nt had any luck. and yeah Ryan still works here!

[rayjay]

If you are using an in tank hatchery I hope you are using decapped cysts, or at the very least, cysts that you've sterilized with bleach.
Brine shrimp cysts are known to harbour nasties like bacteria and I wouldn't even let hatching water come in contact with any of my display tanks.
Tell Ryan that Ray from London says hi.

[mal1099]

I have a pair of banded pipefish. i have never seen them eat any of the provided food.My 150 was established for over a year before i put them in so pods are abundant .I got them cause i had redbugs and they seem to have taken control of that populations also. Still have the redbugs but they are not covering my corals anymore.

[Bman10000]

Will do Ray, also how long does it take the brines to reach adult stage?

[TamiW]

Have you tried offering frozen mysis? I haven't met a flagtail pipefish that won't take frozen mysis after a few feedings. I only feed hikari, which is small, so if you have pe mysis, it may not work.

[rayjay]

Originally Posted by Bman10000

Will do Ray, also how long does it take the brines to reach adult stage?

That is a hard question to give a direct answer for. There are so many variables like temperature first off, density of brine, food density, feeding frequency, food quality and husbandry to name the more common ones.
Under ideal conditions as in rearing systems in aquaculture institutions, they go through all their 15 or so moults in about 8 days.
For the hobbyist, expect a range of about 20 days to 8 weeks, again because of the variables.
At 80° with a reasonable density and feeding 3 times a day, 2 weeks or thereabout would be expected. Sooner for low density
I grow mine at 68-69° (bacteria control for me) and feed twice a day and it usually takes 6 to 8 weeks to get to the final Instar stage. My density is 12 grams of cysts to about 20g (26g container) of water at 1.017.
Now all that being said, they are basically close to full size earlier and it's not a case of waiting until the final moult before you can use them. I use them at all stages from a few days old to 3 or 4 months old.
Speaking of moults, because of all these moults the brine go through, you end up with a lot of the decayed moults contaminating the culture water. Most recent moults basically look just like dead brine shrimp but they disintegrate rapidly into small particles.
I do a vacuuming of the bottom after letting settle for an hour or so and put that vacuumed water in pop bottles to allow settlement and siphoning off of brine that get removed by cleaning so they can be returned to the rearing vessel.

[Bman10000]

Read your article and it was great, i havent had much luck decapsulating because ive been using a bunch of different websites and trying they're methods. Im going to try your method today

[Bman10000]

Yeah I tried frozen mysis, my clowns, banggai, and chromis eat it before the pipefish can.

[Mariebaby21]

Try arctipods

[mtc1966]

Originally Posted by Bman10000

Yeah I tried frozen mysis, my clowns, banggai, and chromis eat it before the pipefish can.

I don't think your pipefish is going to survive trying to compete with those fish for food.

[small alien]

You gotta put more food in all at once and turn off the flow for a while.

By banded eats prawn roe, cyclopeeze, hikari mysis and, jsut recently, some sustainable aquatics pellets soaked in water. Id try nutramar ova prawn roe. Every pipe I've ever had has eaten roe. Good luck.