Barbed pipefish

Where they come from

Barbed pipefish (Urocampus nanus) are little coastal pipefish from the Indo-Pacific. You usually find their cousins in sheltered spots like seagrass beds, mangrove edges, and quiet estuaries where the water swings from salty to slightly fresh depending on tides and rain.

That background matters because they are built for slow, cluttered habitats and steady grazing on tiny live foods - not open water, not strong flow, and definitely not a community tank feeding frenzy.

Setting up their tank

Think of their tank like a calm brackish lagoon with lots of things to wrap a tail around. They are not fast swimmers, so you are setting the tank up so the pipefish can hang out, hunt, and not get pushed around.

• Tank size: I would not do less than 15-20 gallons for a pair or small group, mostly for stability and food production.
• Salinity: keep it in the low-brackish range and stable (around 1.005-1.012 specific gravity works for many keepers). Pick a number and stick to it.
• Temperature: mid-70s F is a comfortable target. Avoid hot swings.
• Flow: gentle, with dead spots broken up just enough that food does not rot everywhere.
• Filtration: oversized biological filtration plus a sponge prefilter on any intake. Pipefish and bare intakes do not mix.
• Lighting: moderate. Enough for macroalgae and your eyes, not a blasting reef spotlight.

Decor-wise, give them hitching posts everywhere: fake seagrass, branching macroalgae (Caulerpa is common in brackish setups), gorgonian-style decor, or even zip-tied plastic craft mesh covered in algae. The goal is lots of vertical and angled structure so they can anchor and peck for food.

If you can, seed the tank with live rock or live sand that has been kept brackish (not straight marine, not freshwater), and add some macroalgae. A refugium section or a hang-on breeder box full of chaeto/macro works surprisingly well as a pod factory.

What to feed them

This is the make-or-break part. Barbed pipefish are slow, deliberate hunters with tiny mouths. Most of them will ignore flakes and pellets forever. Plan on live and frozen foods sized for a small pipefish.

• Best staple in my experience: enriched live baby brine shrimp (BBS) and enriched adult brine for larger individuals.
• Also great: live or frozen mysis if they are big enough and will take it (many need smaller prey).
• Really useful: copepods (Tisbe-type), amphipods (small), and other cultured microcrustaceans.
• Occasional: chopped frozen foods if they will accept it, but do not count on it.

I have had the best luck target-feeding with a turkey baster or pipette. Turn the flow down, gently puff a cloud of live food right in front of their hitching area, and give them time. They do not rush. If tankmates are present, they will steal everything before the pipefish even line up a shot.

Watch the belly. A pipefish that is eating well has a gently rounded abdomen, not pinched behind the head. The nice part is they are easy to read once you get used to them.

How they behave and who they get along with

They are calm, curious little sticks. Most of the day is hitching, scanning, and pecking at tiny moving dots. They do better in pairs or small groups if you have the space and can keep food heavy, but one can also do fine if it is not competing.

• Good tankmates: other slow, peaceful brackish fish that do not outcompete them (often: none, or very carefully chosen).
• Avoid: puffers, scats, monos, most gobies that pounce on pods, fast eaters, fin nippers, and anything curious that mouths at them.
• Inverts: small snails and some hardy brackish shrimp can work, but large hungry shrimp may steal food constantly.

They are not aggressive, but they do get stressed by chaos. If they are always hiding, changing hitching spots constantly, or breathing fast, something in the tank is bothering them (flow, tankmates, or water quality).

Breeding tips

Like seahorses, pipefish dads carry the young. You will usually notice courtship as gentle parallel swimming and lots of attention between a pair, then the male develops a more obvious brood area and starts looking a bit fuller.

If you get them spawning, the hard part is raising the babies. The fry are tiny and need tiny live foods multiple times a day. Think rotifers and very small copepods right away, then newly hatched brine later. A separate rearing container with gentle air and daily small water changes is way easier than trying to raise them in the display.

Common problems to watch for

• Starvation: the most common issue. They can look fine for a while, then drop weight quickly. Watch body shape and feeding response.
• Getting outcompeted: even peaceful fish can make them fail just by being quicker at food.
• Intake accidents: weak swimmers + strong filter intakes is a bad combo. Use sponges and keep flow gentle.
• Sudden salinity changes: top off evaporated water with fresh water, not saltwater, and do not swing specific gravity around during water changes.
• Bacterial issues and tail problems: stress and dirty water show up as sores, frayed fins, or tail tip damage from rough decor.
• Gas bubble problems: can happen in syngnathids if conditions are off. Keep temps reasonable, avoid supersaturation, and keep water clean.

If something looks off, my first move is always the boring stuff: test ammonia/nitrite, check nitrate, check salinity with a calibrated refractometer, and look at temperature swings. Then I watch an actual feeding. Most pipefish problems show up there before they show up anywhere else.