Gulf Pipefish

Care at a glance

Overview

One of the hardier pipefish, spending its day threaded through plants and decor near the bottom of a quiet tank, and a good match for seahorse systems. It still feeds like a pipefish, so offer frozen mysis, enriched brine shrimp and copepods at least twice a day for adults.

In the wild

Native to seagrass and macroalgae beds of the western Atlantic, from Florida and the Gulf of Mexico down the Central and South American coast to Brazil. It sticks to shallow, soft-bottomed bays and estuaries, rarely deeper than a few meters.

Good to know

Females are the showier sex, marked with silvery bars along the lower body rings, and males brood the eggs in a pouch under the tail. In the wild the species copes with everything from fresh river water to hypersaline lagoons, though it is kept as a normal saltwater fish.

Did you know

Courtship runs in reverse for this species, with the larger, more boldly marked females competing for males, which is why the Gulf pipefish appears so often in research on sex role reversal.

Common questions

Related species

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• 

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• 

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• 

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• Janss' Pipefish

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