Breeding Pipefish?

Anyone have any experience breeding pipes? i wanted to get 2 or 3 dargonface and see if they would breed. It would be a cool experience.any info on sexing, keeping groups, breeding and babies would be helpfull!

 

Males have a brooding pouch, so it is easy to sex them. Sygnathids (pipefish, seahorses, sea dragons) in general are social, so having a few of the same breed is fine, and recommended. While they will breed in the tank, raising fry is a whole different matter. They are extremely difficult to raise successfully. You need to have multiple tanks set up for different stages of the process. You will also need to hatch artemia (baby brine shrimp) daily. It is a very expensive and difficult process. I'm not saying don't, but to lots of research and make sure you save up and don't cut any corners.

 

Thanks for the input. Ill have time over the summer to do the whole hatching thing. and I dont have to always have to raise the babys.

 

My wife and I bought a dragonface pipefish, and by the time we brought it home the bag was full of babies. We attempted to raise them, but didn't keep them alive longer than a week. Definitely a task that you have to be dedicated to and still be ready for failure. Throwing something together because you have a bag full of babies isn't the way to start, and the baby brine are too large for them to eat as young as they were in our tank. Our rotifers were either too large, not abundant enough, or lacked the enrichment needed to keep them alive -- copepods would have been a better start, but we found out from a breeder too late.