Dora's pipefish

Care at a glance

Overview

Dora's pipefish is a slow, specialist freshwater pipefish that needs a mature, heavily planted tank set up as its life support before it arrives. It is a gentle, social fish, best kept as a small group of its own kind, but it eats only tiny moving prey and is easily starved or outcompeted, so tankmates must be chosen with great care, or left out entirely in favor of a species tank. Plan on a steady supply of live and frozen micro-foods, such as newly hatched brine shrimp, copepods, small mosquito larvae and Mysis. It drifts low among plants and wants gentle flow. A planted tank of about 112 liters or more suits a small group.

In the wild

Microphis deokhatoides comes from rivers of the Malay Peninsula and western Indonesia, drifting along weedy, slow-moving margins and among submerged roots. Recreate that with dense planting, fine-leaved and floating cover, tangles of wood or root, and gentle, well-filtered flow it can hold station in. Warm water at 23 to 28 degrees Celsius and pH 6.5 to 7.5 suits it. A biologically mature tank with an established micro-fauna helps keep this fussy feeder supplied between meals.

Good to know

Microphis deokhatoides is a fully freshwater pipefish of the Syngnathidae, the seahorse and pipefish family, reaching about 18 centimeters. It is still often traded under its older name Doryichthys deokhatoides. It is a poor swimmer that feeds by drawing prey into a long tubular snout. Captive breeding is difficult and rarely achieved, and the fish is a delicate import.

Did you know

As in all pipefish and seahorses, it is the male that becomes pregnant, carrying the eggs on his underside until the fully formed young hatch out and swim free.

Common questions

Related species

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• 

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