Blue Striped Pipefish

[David M]

Doryhamphus species, probably melanopleura ? This pair has been at lfs for about a month, eating frozen CE according to Danny. (btw you hear from Danny soon, he is now helping me in the fishroom and very excited about getting his hands wet as a breeder) I was in the store today and he was casually looking at tanks when he discovereed the male pipe has eggs!!! Naturally I brought them home :rolleyes: Not much info on SH.org about breeding/ rearing them. I'm assuming the larvae/ fry are gonna be pretty darned small :( The eggs look fresh, very bright orange, so probably just laid today or last night. Just another case of being in the right place at the right time :D

[mano]

Nice find David! Good luck rearing the fry....are you going to try rots?

Christine

[mwp]

Good luck David!

Matt

[David M]

Yes rotifers is my guess, but maybe they will hatch out larger than I'm expecting. Time will tell, maybe they won't hatch at all due to transfer, etc but hopefully the pair is healthy and will spawn again.

Looking at pics in the Kuiter book I would have to say they are D. melanopleura .

[David M]

Unbelievable, we have FRY :D I was expecting it to take maybe two weeks as the eggs looked very fresh (bright orange). I guess the lfs just didn't notice them earlier. Anyway I recovered about 40 of them and placed them in a small fishbowl/ kreisel with some rots and few nhbbs. I believe they are too small to take the bbs but sometimes I am shocked at how tiny little reidi babies can eat them so I figured I'd try. These are just about the same size as reidi/ kuda fry, a tad smaller maybe and definately thinner.

[Kathy55g]

Congrats David. You've got the cute ones! Good luck and let me know what you are learning! My alligators are looking good so far. I read that they eat phytoplankton in addition to critters. Is something you know about, too?

[David M]

No I didn't know that, maybe I should get some Marine Snow??

The male is covered with eggs again, so far this is too easy :D

[Paul B]

Here is my male in one of his pregnant modes. I have not collected the fry or tried to raise them. Good luck.
Paul

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/13094Pregnant_pipefish.jpg

[David M]

Paul, yes that is the exact fish with the 3 tail marks. Have you ever noticed how soon after a hatch he is carrying eggs again? I can't believe it was within hours, I'm thinking maybe it was just a partial hatch and what I'm seeing is left over. Kuiter reports "males carry about 85 large eggs", I only recovered about 40 so either they ate them all or this is still half of the one batch. Thanks for the pic, saves me the trouble :D

[Paul B]

David I can't really say, I see them intertwined every few weeks when the dim actinic lights come on but I never really paid attention to how soon they mate again.
I have them in a 100 galon very full reef so I can't always see them and I would never be able to see the fry. I hatch brine shrimp every day to feed the reef and they eat most of them.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/13094Pipe_fish_004.jpg

[mano]

David,

My yellow banded pipes (Doryrhamphus pessuliferus) hold eggs for about a week. The tiny fry hatch and then he very quickly has a new set of eggs. It's amazingly fast! The most I've had hatch and been able to recover was 60 I think. Most of the time I miss them because they eat them.

Good luck with raising the fry and keep us posted!

Christine

[David M]

Thanks Christine, I do believe he was loaded up with new eggs just hours (or less) after the hatch.

The fry are doing OK and definately larger today than yesterday. Hard to say if they are actually eating or just living off yolk. I do see the occasional quick jerky motion which I'm hoping is feeding but can't be sure. Why couldn't I have done this 10 years ago when I could still see ?? :rolleyes:

[clownfish75]

HI David

I have spawned and reared some of these before (2 babies to settlement)

i think they took 12 days to hatch @ 28oC. larvae were fed smallest rots, i think i might have even tried to sieve some between 20um and 60 um, used nanno as green water for the tank, possibly ate the algae not sure, never had a microscope then. i think it took about a month to settlement. cute little white sticks floating around.

turned nasty about 1 week after settlement, and they spawn like there is no tomorrow, mine hatche done night and by the time i say them at 10am the next day they had eggs again.

i think the babies lived for about 18months on bbs before the disapeared (assumed death of natural causes), and beware they are very nasty little buggers to other males, and most extra fish seemed to be males, think i got 10 fish from a collector 9 males 1 female.

good luck.

Christian

[David M]

Too funny Christian, I was just sitting down to post here. While you were typing that the eggs were hatching. So here's what we have: A hatch on 07-08 immediately followed by new eggs. ~40 fry recovered from that hatch at roughly 9AM. The new eggs hatched today, 07-12, 4 days later. I noticed this at 6 AM and could see no live fry, only two dead on the bottom. I then watched the female eat one of them. I watched the pair and it seemed they were initiating courtship, I had to leave the room at 6:10 and when I returned at 6:30 the male had new eggs. Also the other dead fry was gone. So what I can't understand is why there were still ~40 fry at 9:00 AM on Saturday. I had only had the pair for 5 days at that point so maybe they were not yet fully acclimated and a bit off their normal behavior?

I still have a good number of the 07-08 fry, more than half at least, maybe 30. If they live to the next hatch (presumed 4 more days) I will make an effort to collect the new ones. Time to get creative and design the right tank, I looked at the Lee's floating breeder traps and they are just too small.

In nearly six years of trying to breed marine ornamentals I have never had so much happen so quickly, I have barely had this pair a week and I've had two hatches already and a new nest :eek1:

[clownfish75]

interesting how some fish you cant stop and clownfish you cant get started!!!!

I had some A. cynasoma that spawned withing 2 weeks of getting them!!!

I was sure with the pipes that egg duration was longer than that, but my memery is scetchy.

Christian

[mwp]

Sounds like they breed like the Mandarins David! It can get pretty hectic at times!

Matt

[David M]

I'll tell you what, I am going to laugh my arse off if these are easy to raise :lol: Wouldn't it just be a kick if they are a slam dunk and have simply been overlooked ? Time will tell I suppose but so far all I have done is toss the fry into a makeshift kreisel and add rotifers, not much effort has gone into this at all and they look just fine nearing the end of day five. This morning I had some on the bottom I presumed were dead but now they are all up & swimming so I have more than I thought, maybe 35 of the 40 I pulled.

[clownfish75]

dont know about easy, but they werent that difficult, maintianing mum and dad was a harder task.

Christian

[David M]

Hey Christian, I really have to wonder if we talking about the same species. Nothing in your earlier post is even remotely consistent.
> they took 12 days to hatch
>> mine hatched in 4
> larvae were fed smallest rots... between 20um and 60 um
>> I am feeding normal L strain rots and they are pigging out.
> i think it took about a month to settlement
>> I have no idea what this means, they are not larvae, they are fry, little fish swimming around, not much different than the adults
> cute little white sticks floating around.
>> these are dark and definatley NOT floating, they are swimming.
> i think the babies lived for about 18months on bbs
>> Looking at the adults and having experience with various small gobies I doubt the life cycle exceeds 18 months by much, can't imagine an 18 month juvinile phase.

So what I am saying is I think we are talking about two distinctly different fish. :D

[clownfish75]

Well there are many species in the group so quite possibly!!

I could be wrong on the egg duration.
how big are yours? and mine must have been eating rots wel but not sure how big they were they could have been 59um!!!

im fairly sure they were white threads about 3-4mm long at hatch.

sounds liek thee could be a bit of variation between species doesnt it.

Christian

[mwp]

David, what's the story with the Pipe babies?!

Matt

[David M]

Very difficult to be there at the moment of hatch, and if your'e 3 minutes late they are all eaten. I have managed to collect some and try a couple times, they seem to do very well on just rotifers for 6-12 days but die out by that point. So busy with clowns they are a low priority.

Was thinking that something like a good old fashioned guppy breeder would do the trick, fry tend to settle to the bottom. But still since I've no luck raising them it's not high on my list of projects.

[bertoni]

Have you considered some sort of fry collector? I was considering trying to breed banded pipefish.

[danfrith]

I agree with david, In the past I have only seen one fry in the tank from my pair and he was quickly eaten. But I would think they would go for a hire price and be in hire demand than clowns.