Pipefish Question?!

[tchildress]

I'm starting to get more interest in putting 1 or 2 banded pipes in my 90 gallon tank and I figured I would come to this board for advice...I feed my fish mysis shrimp or frozen squid every night. If a pipefish doesn't eat these, what do they eat? I also have plenty of live rock and hiding spaces.
Currently in my tank now:
-Blue Hippo Tang
-Yellow Tang
-Sailfin Tang
-2x Perc Clowns
-Green Mandarin Goby
-Diamond Goby
-Purple dottyback
-Barbershop goby
-Red firefish
-Tiger Goby?
-Some type of hawkfish, it's smaller, but I can remember the name of it right now.
Anyways, any advice would be appreciated...Positive or negative....Thanks!

 

[flower]

Pipefish are cool, nice critters..they eat copepods LOTS and LOTS of them..so unless you have a refugium don't get them. I just noticed the green mandarin, they live on the same food, even with a refugium you won't have enough for both.

 

[teresaq]

ok, there are only a few things I know about pipes.
1 they are all wild caught, and will have to be wormed. There are instuctions here on how to do it.
2 They will have to be QTed until you have wormed them, and trained them to frozen
3. You will have to feed them live enriched bbs until you can train them to frozen mysis. (Depending on thier size at time of purchase ) You may have to train them to frozen cyclops until they are big enough to take mysis, or mini mysis.
That is about all I know. There arent too many here that keep pipes.
T

 

[novahobbies]

Flower and Teresa hit most of the high points that I know of. You can keep them in a reef tank, but banded pipes are very poor swimmers and would wind up hiding in low flow areas most of the time. You would certainly have some competition between the pipes and the Mandarin (although if you have a fuge, I don't think it would be the deal-breaker in your case).
Most people I know now recommend pipefish to be in a species-only aquarium, or if you keep them in a mixed tank, they should be fully de-wormed first. Even with the de-worming, it's not the best idea to mix wild-caught pipes with captive bred and raised seahorses. Risk of unfamiliar pathogens is too great.
What kind of 90g do you have? SPS reef, or LPS? How is your flow??