Dear Grant:
I would say that your best bet for finding good information about dragon face pipefish in a reference is Seahorses, Pipefishes and Their Relatives: a Comprehensive Guide to Syngnathiformes by Rudie H. Kuiter. It includes detailed information on over 350 different species, including Seahorses, Pipefishes, Seadragons, Shrimpfishes, Trumpetfishes and Seamoths as well as a list of all known species of Sygnathids. With more than 1000 spectacular photographs, most taken in the fishes’ natural habitats, the book contains a wealth of information about habitats and behavior, including brief details of ideal aquarium set ups for many of the species. However, it is primarily a picture book, with very little information devoted to the aquarium care of the various seahorses and pipefish. It does do a very nice job of discussing the natural history of many of the specimens and certainly contains the best illustrations of seahorses to date, including courtship, breeding, birth and predation. The detailed coverage of pipefishes is unprecedented. The pictures are breathtaking and it is well worth owning for that reason alone.
You can order a copy of this book online from Jim Forshey at the Aquatic Bookshop (<http://www.seahorses.com/index.shtm>) or from Amazon.com and the other major booksellers. However, it is a fairly expensive book so you may want to check out a copy from your library rather than purchasing your own copy of this beautiful book.
For your purposes, however, Grant, you’ll need to talk to other dragon face pipefish owners so that they can tell you from their own personal experience about the appropriate stocking density and how many may be needed to control red bugs in an aquarium of a given size. And that means talking to other reef keepers, sir, since the delicate dragon face pipes really only do well in large, well-established reef tanks, and, of course, the reefers appreciate them for the service they provide by eating the dreaded red bugs. So if I were you, I would be haunting the discussion forums devoted to reef keepers and asking the reefers what they would recommend regarding the dragon face pipefish and how many would be appropriate to keep in your 106-gallon reef system.
Best of luck eradicating your plague of red bugs, Grant!
Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna
Ocean Rider, Inc. is an Organic Hawaiian-Based Seahorse Aqua-Farm & Aquarium that Follows Strict Good Farming Practices in Raising Seahorses and Other Aquatic Life.
