Opossum pipefish

Care at a glance

Overview

Like all pipefish it is a slow, deliberate hunter that needs calm surroundings and no food competition, so a species tank is the safe choice. Offer live baby brine shrimp, small shrimp, and mosquito larvae; some individuals learn to take frozen mysis. Keep a pair or small group in around 120 liters with tall plants or branches to hang among. Spawning happens now and then in aquaria, but the seagoing larval stage means fry are almost never raised.

In the wild

Opossum pipefish live in rivers, estuaries, and coastal streams across the Indo-Pacific, from Sri Lanka east to Japan and the Society Islands. Wild adults push well upstream into freshwater, but captive fish are most often kept in low-end brackish water, which keepers find more forgiving. Provide dense planting, fine substrate, gentle flow, 24 to 28 degrees Celsius, and a pH of 7.5 to 8.5, with a specific gravity around 1.005 if run brackish.

Good to know

Microphis brachyurus is one of the larger freshwater pipefish at about 22 centimeters. It is amphidromous: eggs hatch in freshwater, the larvae wash out to sea, and the juveniles later climb back into rivers. The male broods the eggs in a pouch under his trunk. Atlantic populations once counted as a subspecies are now their own species, Microphis lineatus, so the trade fish is the Indo-Pacific form, usually exported from Indonesia.

Did you know

The opossum name comes from the male, which carries the brood on his own body the way an opossum carries its young. Newly hatched larvae drift all the way to the sea before returning to freshwater as juveniles.

Related species

• African red-striped pipefish

  Microphis aculeatus

  7.9 in (20 cm)32 gal (120 L)75–82°F (24–28°C)
• Barhead pipefish

  Microphis leiaspis

  7.5 in (19 cm)32 gal (120 L)72–81°F (22–27°C)
• Rainbow belly pipefish

  Microphis deocata

  5.9 in (15 cm)20 gal (75 L)77–82°F (25–28°C)

• 

  Freshwater pipefish

  Doryichthys martensii

  5.9 in (15 cm)32 gal (120 L)75–82°F (24–28°C)
• African freshwater pipefish

  Enneacampus ansorgii

  5.5 in (14 cm)32 gal (120 L)75–82°F (24–28°C)
• Long-snouted pipefish

  Doryichthys boaja

  16.1 in (41 cm)53 gal (200 L)79–82°F (26–28°C)