Marvelous Mysteries: Breeding Africa’s Freshwater Pipefish

Rebecca Goldring

For one dedicated aquarist, what started as an “oddball” impulse buy quickly turned into an obsession. And for every answer she found when breaking new ground in breeding freshwater pipefishes, there seemed to be more questions.

A few years ago, I brought home a quartet of Enneacampus ansorgii “Cameroon.” The group quickly spawned, with males producing hundreds of eyelash-sized young at a time, but I found myself repeatedly unable to keep any alive beyond three or four days. Too small to consume baby brine shrimp and uninterested in microworms and vinegar eels, they starved to death with depressing consistency.

I reached out to the shop where I’d purchased them in Edgewater, MD and was connected to an importer in Texas, who passed on what little information he could about them: The fish were collected in the bush around the Idenau region of Cameroon. A friend in the hobby also connected me with a gentleman in Pittsburgh who’d had success spawning a group for some time. Confoundingly, where I was getting hundreds of tiny fry, his E. ansorgii were producing low numbers (no more than a dozen) of relatively large young.

Enjoying TFH Magazine? Subscribe Today!

Determined to obtain more specimens, I sent the owners of my go-to shop frequent photos of the fish I’d purchased with captions like “need moar pipefish.” To my delight, they obliged and I got a message a few months later that they’d received more. They agreed to hold them for a day so that I could take first pick. I arrived at the shop the next day to find a half-dozen or so individuals in a tank labeled “Hold for PITA.” After a good laugh, I went to look at the fish and noticed that two of these things were not like the others. While most looked like the ones I had at home, two were swimming rapidly around the tank in a pose similar to a reversed question mark. Their body shape, patterning, and proportions were all noticeably different than E. ansorgii. I left the shop with a few more E. ansorgii and the two contaminants, which both appeared to be E. kaupi.

Spawning and Raising “Pipettes”

My new specimens were smaller than my original group of freshwater pipefish and took several weeks to reach maturity, but they began spawning regularly once they did. To my great fortune, the two E. kaupi turned out to be a pair. Their build and swimming style made the pregnant male immediately noticeable.

With the tank at a temperature of 76° to 78°F (24.5° to 25.5°C) the male’s pregnancies each lasted about 10 days. While newborns were slightly larger and less numerous than E. ansorgii, they were still too small to take any of the foods I had on offer, and none survived beyond a week. In truth, the newly born “pipettes” resembled, in size, quantity, and almost planktonic-like drifting, the larvae common to marine fish. The Idenau region of Cameroon is relatively coastal and likely subject to tidal inundation with seawater. So, I tried adding varying amounts of sea salt to tanks with larvae, which, on its own, did not result in improved survival. Friend and fellow TFH author Joshua Wiegert suggested I try culturing saltwater copepods and, while reluctant, I soon asked him to help me procure some.

Unbeknownst to me, he also added a bag of freshwater zooplankton to the mix. This starter grew into a gallon jug of bright-green water. I began experimenting with pipefish larvae, moving adults out of the tank and letting larvae go free-range while adding various pods to the water, moving them to smaller tanks set up with airstones at one end to create a circular flow and keep larvae and food items suspended, and pipetting pods into German breeding rings multiple times a day.

Nothing seemed to work. Frustrated, I used a few larvae in an absolutely ridiculous experiment. I placed some in each of my cultures, fresh and saltwater. Surprisingly, all of the larvae made it at least a day, regardless of salinity, but the ones that lasted the longest (about a week) were those I put in the greenwater culture.
Finally, I had something to go on and managed to execute my first successful attempt at raising these pipefish in captivity. Having noticed pregnant males of both species, I prepared two 1-gallon (3.8-liter) drum-style fish bowls at around Day 9 by filling them with a combination of about 40 percent greenwater, 35 percent tank water, and 25 percent Apocyclops culture.

Apocyclops can survive a wide range of temperatures and salinities. I figured that the water would be salty enough to keep the pods alive, but not too salty for presumably freshwater fish. I set an airstone against one of the rounded sides of each bowl to create a setup like the Kreisel tanks frequently used to house jellyfish. When the larvae were born, I used a pipette to move about a dozen of the biggest and strongest-looking babies to each bowl. Many weeks later, I had five surviving E. kaupi and one surviving E. ansorgii, all large enough to take baby brine shrimp. At this point, I moved them to a 10-gallon (38-liter) tank with a small air-driven sponge filter that I had spent weeks preparing while they lived in the bowls.

Growing Out the Survivors

To set up the eventual 10-gallon grow-out, I started by creating a brackish environment at around 22 to 25 ppt marine salt. I added water from each of my copepod cultures and made sure there was plenty of cover. I fed the tank powdered spirulina and greenwater regularly and watched as the pod populations took off. At the same time, I slowly performed small water changes, reducing salinity to around 16 ppt, giving the pods time to adapt to the reduced salinity. This meant that I had a tank full of food to add my “pipettes” to. When the larvae were all able to take baby brine shrimp, I relocated them to the grow-out tank.

I gave them a heavy feeding of Artemia nauplii once a day, and the slightly salty environment extended the lifespan of their food supply while fostering colonies of “backup” foods (the copepods). Ultimately, the sole E. ansorgii and four of the five E. kaupi survived to adulthood.

I found it difficult to repeat the process due to an uptick in obligations at work and a heavy meeting schedule. Just one missed feeding or water change could doom an entire bowl of larvae. I needed a way to keep them fed and clean even if I couldn’t find time (or, for that matter, remember) to clean and feed them. So I turned back to the German breeding rings.

Sometime during this process, I began using the breeding rings to collect larvae. Newborn pipettes are photophilic and drawn toward light. By removing the sponge filter end from the “jet lifter” version of a breeding ring and placing an LED puck light above it, I could use the combination of light and jet lifter to draw larvae toward the ring and suck them up into it. This made collecting larvae much easier.

I began experimenting with leaving larvae in the breeding rings again and feeding Brachionus manjavacas rotifers ordered from a biological supply company, in addition to Apocyclops and greenwater. To maintain a constant supply of these items, I purchased enteric feeding bags and hung them from the ceiling, filling them with a mixture of greenwater, Apocyclops culture (with water), and rotifer culture. Then, I set them to a couple of drips per second. To my delight, this method worked to keep E. kaupi larvae alive in much larger numbers than my previous attempts. It was still not quite enough for the E. ansorgii, however.



Around this time, I changed another thing—my supply of Artemia cysts ran low and I added a can to a friend’s order from a different supplier. The can was bigger, the hatch rate expected to be lower, but the size difference was a surprise. The hatched nauplii were maybe half the size of the other brand, and I found that about half of newborn E. kaupi could and would eat them. With this “breakthrough,” I found myself able to raise dozens of E. kaupi larvae at a time, albeit still very slowly. Unfortunately, these Artemia nauplii were still too large for the newborn E. ansorgii.

Since cultures of microorganisms are apparently as addictive as potato chips, I continued to add to my collections—saltwater microalgae (red and green), multiple jars of green freshwater, Tigger pods (for no particular reason), and an actual Artemia culture soon joined my fish room. After some debate about the best place to put them, I bought them their own reflective grow tent. Yes, that’s right, I bought a grow tent for algae and copepods. Meanwhile, my 10-gallon grow-out turned into a 10-gallon nursery loaded with any tiny copepod that would withstand salinities of 10 to 15 ppt, and I expanded my grow-out to a 20-gallon (76-liter) long aquarium with half a cup of salt added.

Continuous Experimentation

I continued to experiment with the E. kaupi and different salinities. I have not raised any to adulthood (or even past 7 to 10 days) in pure freshwater. I do believe they require at least some salt to survive infancy. That said, I have raised some to adulthood in a consistent solution of a half-cup of marine salt per 20 gallons of water. It seems that even a little bit of salt improves chances of survival. While I’ve had E. ansorgii make it close to two weeks in green freshwater (no salt), I have not succeeded beyond that. I have also tried placing larvae directly into marine-level salinity. Interestingly, they survive in full saltwater for about as long as they survive in full freshwater.

Along this journey, I’ve taken to looking at a lot of things under a microscope (and not just a metaphorical one). I still have truly no idea what “first foods” are for the E. ansorgii, but I’ve come to suspect that Euglena are among them. While my microscope is not powerful enough to definitively identify Euglena, I have seen small green things darting about in samples of my greenwater culture, in addition to clumps of stationary Chlorella algae. Euglena are one of those cool organisms that hover somewhere between plant and animal—they’re capable of photosynthesis but also consume paramecium and other single-cell organisms. They’re highly motile and move relatively quickly, and it’s not uncommon to find them in greenwater.

For the E. ansorgii, I’ve returned to my gallon drum bowls. My current mix resembles the original but now contains both freshwater and saltwater algae. I strain and feed rotifers, Apocyclops, and Tisbe pods several times a day. Instead of an airstone, I’ve begun using rigid air tubing at a rate of 1 to 2 bubbles per second. To keep the water from fouling, I swap out small amounts of water every few days, taking care to clean the bottom of each bowl as much as possible, and replacing it with a mix of water from the parent tank, freshwater greenwater, and saltwater greenwater. I also began culturing some Brachionus manjavacas rotifers that tolerate a wide range of salinities and fall within a “possible food” size range.

This method still doesn’t yield large numbers of surviving larvae, but I had a few individuals from a recent batch hit the eight-week mark and begin consuming fresh Artemia nauplii. At this age, they are about the size of a small sewing needle and still seem impossibly fragile, but getting them this far is a step in the right direction.

This past May, I gave a talk at a fish club in Milwaukee. This was about a month into raising the latest batch of E. ansorgii. I knew there was not a snowball’s chance in hell that my partner would strain microorganisms or hatch brine shrimp to feed to the developing pipettes. I took a risk and left them, just as they were, in the bowl full of all sorts of pods, rotifers, and who knows what else. I returned home a few days later and, to my surprise, found a good number still alive. While I still don’t know what they’re eating from the mix, they were absolutely eating and growing.



In July, I traveled to Pittsburgh for a talk and had the chance to observe a very large group of the Pittsburgh E. ansorgii. While they look similar to mine, the adults were far smaller, their color more uniform (all of the fish were the same shade of brown), and the males clearly had a different pouch size, shape, and structure than the E. ansorgii “Cameroon.”

The large group had fish ranging in size from about 2 cm to about 12 cm, with the smallest fish having been born fairly recently. These fish were kept and raised in pure freshwater. I brought a set of four home and already have a pregnant male. Looking at him from the underside, it’s obvious that the eggs he carries are much larger than what my original group produces and far fewer.

As if this weren’t all complicated enough, I have a fourth type of apparent Enneacampus in my fish room. I found this solitary female when my favorite shop attempted to obtain more E. kaupi to help me broaden my gene pool.

The shipment from the wholesaler unfortunately contained just one fish that wasn’t E. ansorgii “Cameroon.” It also wasn’t the same as the fish I’d determined were E. kaupi. Though the fish was similar in shape and proportions to E. kaupi, it was decidedly larger and more snub-nosed. I would love to find a male to go with her but doubt it will happen before the end of her lifespan. Like their saltwater counterparts, freshwater pipefish don’t have a particularly long life.

Questioning the Literature

My experience with Enneacampus raises the question of whether the genus really does contain only two species. While E. kaupi is known to be brackish, E. ansorgii is supposedly freshwater. To confirm that, all you have to do is read the 1981 paper by C. E. Dawson,, “Notes on West African Pipefishes [Sygnathidae], with Description of Enneacampus, N. Gen,” (Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Vol. 94) detailing the consolidation of several species into a genus with just two, right?

The Pittsburgh E. ansorgii appear to fit Dawson’s description of them as fully freshwater, carrying just a few dozen relatively large larvae at a time. My E. kaupi also fit Dawson’s description pretty well, as he mentions over 800 larvae measuring about half a centimeter found in the brood pouch of a single preserved male. From what I can tell, that was the only pregnant male specimen he was able to get his hands on. What about my big, lonely female? What is she?

Dawson declared Western Africa as lacking in numbers of pipefish species compared to similar latitudes in other parts of the world. In reading Dawson’s article, and the descriptions of the several Syngnathus species that he consolidated into Enneacampus, it seems likely that the original species descriptions were closer to reality, and possibly still not capturing the full diversity of inland and coastal freshwater and brackish-water pipefishes in Western Africa.

Even the original descriptions include relatively broad ranges of fin rays, body rings, color patterns, etc. It might not seem like much to say a species of fish has 16 to 20 rays in the dorsal fin, but that degree of variability probably indicates different species. While some people have fewer or greater than five digits on each hand, the description of Homo sapiens does not include those rare variations as part of the species description.

An Ongoing Challenge

African pipefish are fascinating. They’re challenging to keep and positively daunting to rear. I’ve found my work with them extremely rewarding. There’s so much we just don’t know about them, and I’d encourage anyone up for the challenge to give them a shot.

As with any fish, if you see these in a shop, ask what they’re eating and ask to see them eat. Feeding is absolutely the hardest part of keeping adults alive and healthy.

If you decide to take some home, be “that person” and ask for their collection point. If the seller doesn’t know, hound them relentlessly until they connect you with their wholesaler, then hound that person relentlessly. We have a lot more to learn about these fish, and a good starting point is always knowing where they actually came from.