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Pipefish have very much the same dietary and environmental needs as seahorses. They are ambush predators that need to feed often throughout the day. They should not be kept with aggressive or fast moving tankmates that can outcompete them for food. Most pipefish available for sale to aquarium keepers are wild caught (WC) and as such are only used to eating live food.
Those with very small mouths (such as the dragon pipefish of the genus Corythoichthys) need very small prey items such as copepods or baby brine shrimp (BBS). Those with larger mouths, such as alligator pipefish (Syngnathoides biaculeatus) may be able to eat small ghost shrimp, adult enriched brine shrimp, or live mysids (their natural food). Some pipefish can be trained to take appropriate sized frozen foods, but this is not a given. It can be difficult and expensive to train a WC pipefish to eat frozen foods, and you need to be prepared to provide live foods permanently if it won't train to frozen. Captive bred pipefish (CB) while not common, are often already trained to eat frozen food, acclimated to captive aquarium conditions and disease free. Related Topics:
Feeding
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