Breeding Journal, Species: Dunckerocampus baldwini

That's great news!

Interesting observation about the fry - I also noticed the s-swimming of the dragonface batch I had a month or so ago (also acquired from a "in the bag" birth); and the more gliding/going with the flow of D. excisus fry. I'm curious how some of the other flagtail pipefish fry behave.
 

Two of the fry from the first hatch lasted 4 days.  The third one lasted 6 days.
 
Both males are still holding the vast majority of their eggs.  Both males do have a couple of eggs that have disappeared (or been "absorbed"?), but the number of missing eggs is very low.
 
The male in Tank #1 is due to hatch tomorrow night, if the 10 day incubation period holds true.  The male in Tank #2 is due on Thursday, given the same assumption.
 
The eggs go through a rather dramatic color change during incubation.  At first, they are bright orange in color.  As days progress, they become more whitish/light grey in color.  On about day number 6 or 7, they start to darken.  By day 9 or 10, they are a very dark grey.
 
I am expecting a shipment of Parvocalanus (a very kind gift from Dr. Andrew Rhyne) to arrive tomorrow.  My experience with Doryrhamphus excisus was that I had higher survival rates when Parvocalanus was given as a first food, rather than Apocyclops.  I'm hoping that this will hold true for this species.  Additionally, these fry are coming from parents who now appear to be a little more well conditioned.  Time will tell!
 
The two males in Tank #3 are kinda "status quo".  I've only been feeding them frozen, and they are both still alive.  I still see the one taking frozen out of the water column, and the other, I only see snicking off the bottom.  I honestly don't pay that much attention to them.  Frankly, I just consider them "backup males" right now.
 
The pair in Tank #1 has been worrying me, quite frankly.  Although the male is still holding most of his eggs, these two fish are much more reluctant to eat frozen than the other pair.  I have been "breaking down" and feeding them various live feeds from time to time, but my Tigriopus culture isn't really keeping up with the demand, and I have had a couple of Artemia failures (bleached one batch of cysts too long while decapping and killed them, airline failure caused massive suffocation when enriching in another case, etc.) that have significantly reduced the live food available to them.  They do eat *some* frozen, but the amount of snicking I'm seeing with this pair leaves me worried.  My long-term plan for them is to get my Artemia ducks back in a a row, and then cold turkey them onto frozen, like I did with the others.  I have noticed that they will eagerly take Artemia that is up to perhaps a week old, but the larger, faster-swimming Artemia just don't interest them.  They do express some interest in the "juvenile" size Artemia, but just grow weary of watching them swim in spirals, and seem to never take them.
 
The pair in Tank #2 is eating frozen food very well now.  The male will eat frozen cyclops out of the water column with great enthusiasm, and while the female is still almost always snicking it off the bottom, she is still seen eating enough that I am encouraged that she will eventually come around, and become an enthusiastic frozen food eater.  I have high hopes for them!
 

I fed the pair in Tank #1 some Dan's Feed enriched BBS tonight.  They scarfed it up!  That male is due to hatch tonight.  When they eat, these fish often turn 180 degrees (upside down), and snick food off the bottom.  While the male was doing this tonight, I got a good look at his eggs.  It appears that he probably has only about 50% of the original egg mass left tonight.  Not entirely surprising, since he hasn't been eating that well.  If the idea proposed in the scientific papers that Tami posted apply to this species, then he may very well have been absorbing nutrition from some of the embryos he has been carrying. 
 
I have a very dense, healthy culture of Parvocalanus that arrived today from Dr. Andrew Rhyne (many thanks, Andy!), so I have a combination of Parvocalanus and Apocyclops to feed the fry that I expect to hatch tonight from this male.  Considering the missing eggs I described above, I expect perhaps about 25 or so fry from this hatch.
 
The male in Tank #2 is eating very well.  Nonetheless, I also see some missing eggs from his abdomen.  He is due to hatch two nights from now.  We shall see how many eggs he has left on Thursday night, when his hatch is due.
 
I plan to use appx. 1/3 of the Parvocalanus that Andy sent me on the hatch I anticipate tonight.  Another 1/3 is earmarked for the hatch I anticipate on Thursday night.  The remaining 1/3, I will try to culture for future use.
 

The hatch was right on time tonight, right at 10 days.  I snagged appx. 20 +/- fry in my Chad Vossen larval snagger, about 1 hour after lights out.  Transferred them into the same 2 gallon kreisel setup I have previously described in my Doryrhamphus excisus journal.  Added both Parvocalanus and Apocyclops, plus live Isochrysis, and set the airline and the filtered light on them just as described for the Bluestripes.  Pictures and more updates later.

Just thought I'd add some images from this hatch.  FWIW, it is REALLY HARD to take pictures of fry living in rather dense "geen water" (really "golden water" made up of Isochrysis + Pavlova).  These were taken with a flashlight illuminating the fishbowl kriesel from behind.
 

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You'll get it conquered soon.

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

Great pics. At least you are getting them in focus.
Cute little guys.

nail it Jim, nail it!

Thanks, everybody, for the encouagement!
 
Well, just like the last time Tank #2 hatched, I waited and waited, and saw no fry.  I checked several times throughout the night, but saw no fry, and I could see that the male was still holding dark eggs.  Finally, at 5:00 AM, I gave up and turned the filter back on.
 
Of course, at 8:00 AM I awoke to find 8 fry in the snagger!  This was a partial hatch, as the male is still holding some dark eggs, and I see no new orange eggs.  I'm not sure how many I lost to the filter.  Rather than set up a whole kreisel just for those 8 fry, I added them to the existing larval kreisel from the hatch from two days ago.  I also added more phyto to that kreisel.
 
The male in Tank #1 has absorbed almost all of his eggs from the spawn just two mornings ago.  It looks like I'm not going to get any to hatch from that spawn.  This pair really needs to get weaned onto frozen better.  I think I need to get really mean with them.
 
The 2-day old fry (now working on day 3) are looking good this morning.  Nice full guts, and good strong "posture" in the water, without excessive fast "S" squiggle swimming.  For those of you who didn't see the image on Facebook yesterday, here is a nice shot I got of one of them yesterday morning:
 

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wow jim great pic
 

Go man, go! I think tank #1 just needs time. Your going on ... what? ... a month and a half or so?

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Great pictures!  Very exciting!!!

The rest of the eggs the male in Tank #2 was carrying hatched sometime last night.  I got about 12 fry from this hatch, and once again, added them to the single kreisel.  I vacuumed the bottom a little bit with one of my used phyto rigid+flexible airline rigs, and topped off with about 150 ml of dense Isochrysis + 100 ml of RO water.  The copepod population in the kreisel seems to be doing OK -- lots of both Parvocalanus and Apocyclops can be readily seen.  Lots of hunting and snicking, too.  The older fry are easily distinguished from the ones 2 or 3 days younger by their longer snouts and overall larger (thicker, more so than longer) size.  They are hard to count, but out of the total of about 40 fry I've put into that tank over the last 3 days, I'd say that appx. 25 are alive right now.  I believe I've had some pretty harsh transfer losses from the last two nights' hatches.
 
The male in Tank #2 is holding new eggs this morning, but it is a sparse, weak spawn.  The female in that tank is just starting to snick the cyclops out of the water column, I suspect she just needs to eat better.

Congratulations on your excellent success! Do you start with a sterilized kreisel for the larvae? How do you manage water quality for them?

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

I am using the protocol I developed for Doryrhamphus excisus.  You can find it here:  http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/fb.ashx?m=63782
 
I am not exactly sterilizing the fishbowls I use for the kreisels, I just wash them very well with very hot water.  The water quality is primarily maintained by using live Isochrysis for my "green water".  I do use a small amount, like 5 drops or so, of AmQuel Plus daily, just as insurance.  We shall see how much tweaking this protocol needs for whatever differences there are between this species and the Bluestripes.

Today's update:  I awoke this morning to the fry in the kreisel not looking just "right".  Their bellies weren't quite as full as I'd like them to look, and I saw few of them snicking.  Many of them were looking a bit listless.  I freaked!
 
First thing I did was to do an ammonia test.  It showed an undetectable ammonia level.  Not surprising, given the combination of live phyto and also the use of AmQuel Plus over the last few days.
 
I did stay up until about 2:00 AM this morning, and the lights on their tank did stay on until then.  I wondered if the issue was some sort of sleep deprivation issue, but in my previous conversations with Dan Underwood about this issue with seahorse fry, he didn't consider this to be a big issue, if I recall correctly (which I sometimes don't do).
 
I finally did notice that the copepod density in the water column where the fry were was relatively sparse.  There were quite a few copepods, mostly Apocyclops, that were hugging the lowest 1/2" or so of the fishbowl.  I did my best to stir these up into the water column.  I did have a rather dense culture of Apocyclops that I've been holding in a 500 ml beaker, ready for the hatch from Tank #2 that was expected last Thursday night, but ended up being spread over two nights.  I siphoned some detritus and a few dead pipe fry from the bottom of the kreisel, and replaced the water I had removed with the dense Apocyclops culture.  Within a couple of hours, I saw the usual snicking pattern, and also saw the nice, yellow bellies on the fry that indicates to me that they are eating nicely.
 
I have found that it is very important to pay close attention to the fry-- to make sure that they are eating -- to make sure that they have full guts, and that they are actually successfully snicking live food items.  While I previously had a theory that the Bluestripe pipefish (Doryrhamphus excisus) did better for me when fed Parvocalanus instead of Apocyclops as a first food because of the smaller nauplii size, what I have been observing with these D. baldwini fry is that they seem to prefer adult Parvocalanus, rather than the nauplii.  My experience today leads me to believe that they will take larger Apocyclops, too, but there seems to be something about the Parvocalanus, whether it be the shape, or the swimming pattern, or whatever, that makes the fry more inclined to take them, rather than the Apocyclops.  Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the nauplius size, since they are focusing on the adults.
 
Meanwhile, I am pleased to report that the male in Tank #2 now has a very full abdomen of eggs!  While he had a very sparse set of eggs yesterday, it appears that the gaps in his flaps were filled by a second egg transfer this morning.  Nice to know that they may carry eggs simultaneously from multiple egg transfers on different days.  I have a relatively young pair of D. excisus in another tank that recently started breeding, and I similarly noticed that the male was carrying just a few eggs one day last week, and that just two days later, his abdomen was much more full of eggs.  Very similar thing happening with both fish.
 

We are now at the end of Day 6.  I still have appx. 18 fry alive (hard to count them in the "green water").  I think that most of the losses are from the later hatches, and that that the vast majority of the survivors are from the hatch from Tank #1 on the night of the 8th.
 
I've been apprehensive about today, because it was after Day 6 that I lost the last fry from the weak hatch of 3 fry I first had.  These guys, though, are doing MUCH better.  I see full bellies on almost all of them.  It is really cool at night, when they are light primarily from the fluorescent light from above, you can clearly see the dark backbone of the fry, with a bright pink stripe below that, running from just behind the snout to the location of the anal fin.  The thickness and brightness of that pink stripe is a good indication of how well that particular fry is eating.
 
The food in their bowl is almost exclusively Apocyclops at this point.  There are a few Parvocalanus, but they are outnumbered by at least 10:1, if not 20:1 by the Apocyclops now.  There is a tendency for the Apocyclops to congregate in a rather dense cloud very near the bottom, on the "leeward" side of the bottom, relative to the circular current created by the bubbles from the airline.  A couple of times a day, I will turn the air way up, and wiggle the rigid airline down around the bottom, so as to stir up the cloud into the water column, hoping to make more food items available to the fry swimming up there.  The fry tend to primarily hang out in the "leeward" half of the upper half of the fishbowl.  Still, even without doing this, there are plenty of Apocyclops up in the water column to be available as food.

 
Yes. That would explain the partial hatching that you've been getting.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Well, not necessarily. 
 
The male in Tank #2 received a complete egg transfer on January 1st, and I saw no change on the 2nd.  Nonetheless, that batch did hatch out on different nights. 
 
It was the subsequent spawn, after the hatch that was complete, that occurred over two days.
 

Keep up the great work Jim - success with this species will be a great way to kick off the new year.

FWIW, I've not had much luck with Apocyclops and seahorse fry. I don't know what it is they don't like about them; but they seem to do much better with the Euterpina acutifrons. There were a few times where I let my Euterpina cultures get dangerously low, had a surprise batch of babies, and used the Apocyclops. I had very poor success rate with them; I don't know if it could apply to syngnathids as well.  I had the same problem with dragonface pipe larvae ignoring them; though as I only had the one brood I couldn't possibly pin that on the Apocyclops. I have raised clowns on the Apocyclops (just to see if I could). But my luck with them for seahorses has not been great.
 
My stab-in-the-dark hypothesis is that they have predator avoidance that is quite good. I've seen seahorse fry target them and they manage to zip away over a large distance (a half cm or so) rapidly. I only observed that a couple times though, and it really is just a stab in the dark. It could also be that they multiply so fast that they just are using up the available oxygen and creating a lot of waste, sort of how rotifers can quickly overrun a larvae tank that uses greenwater if you're not careful.

Well, the Apocyclops worked for raising the Bluestripe pipefish quite nicely, although I did notice that I got even higher survival rates with Parvocalanus.
 
It is time for an update.  Day by day, the number of fry from this batch has dwindled.  A week ago there were 16.  The next day, 14.  Then 11, 9, 6, and yesterday morning I awoke to only 2 left.
 
I have noticed that the losses almost always happen during the night.  On a hunch, I left the light on the kreisel last night, and I still had two fry this morning.  Today is day 11 for these.  It may be that they need constant light and constant eating until they get larger.  It may also be that I need a different copepod.
 
I have been able to do a good job of maintaining my Parvocalanus cultures, so far.  I should be able to raise the next batch of fry on Parvocalanus alone, at least until they outgrow it.
 
The male in tank #2 is due to hatch either tomorrow night, or the next night (or both).  I'll be keeping a close eye on him, starting tonight, and will be ready with everything I will need to set up a new kreisel for this next batch.  The female in tank #2 has been worrying me for the last few days.  Last Tuesday night, I put a big ball of chaetomorpha from the sump of the 210 display in their tank, to give them a treat of some live copepods, and both she and the male pigged out on the live stuff.  The next morning, I also saw her eagerly eating stuff from the chaetomorpha.  Then, about mid-morning, she started just resting kind of listlessly on the bottom of the tank, and really didn't look right.  The change was rather abrupt.  That was 3 days ago.  She's been looking and acting sickly like this the whole time.  She is aware when I enter the room, and will move to "hide" from me when I approach the tank.  I haven't seen he eating at all the last 3 days, but starting last night, and including today, I have seen her starting to act a bit more normal, doing more normal swimming around, but she still returns to that laying on the bottom behavior.  I'm going to treat the tank to a bunch of live Tigriopus tonight, and see if that helps.  The male continues to eat well, but does spend a lot of time hanging out near the female.
 
The pair in Tank #1 spawned again this morning.  They are still reluctant eaters, but I've just resigned myself to giving them live things when I have them, and frozen things when I don't.  I've had a nice Tigriopus bloom in one of the big buckets in the greenhouse, so I've been able to offer them the copepods rather frequently lately.  The male in Tank #1 still is holding himself in this arched posture, and looks rather awkward and/or uncomfortable with this whole egg-holding thing when he is pregnant.  Very different from the male in Tank #2, who maintains normal, straight "posture", and doesn't appear to be phased by holding eggs.

One observation I, and others have noticed when we have losses at night... Hydroids. 
 
Have you looked for those, or are you pretty sure it is a food intake related issue?

-Adam

There are no hydroids.  I am pretty sure it is a food intake issue.
 

As of tonight (the end of the 13th day), the two remaining fry from the batch hatched on the evening of January 8th are still alive, and looking healthy.  I think the 24 hour photoperiod is working.  I added some Moina salina to their kreisel a couple of days ago.  There has been an impressive bloom of both Apocyclops and Moina in the last couple of days.  I'll probably have to do a substantial water change tomorrow, just to reduce the density of the Apocyclops and the Moina.
 
The female in Tank #2 that had been acting sickly is looking much more normal now.  I think she is "out of the woods", as the saying goes.
 
Although the male in Tank #2 was due to have a hatch event last night, there was no hatch.  I checked at various times throughout the night, and there were simply no fry.  It looks like I'll have to endure another sleepless night tonight.
 
Returning my attention back to the two fry in the kreisel:  It appears that they have begun what I would consider "settlement".  The main behavioral and/or morphological change that indicates the beginning of settlement with pipefishes, in my experience, is a change in how the "carry" themselves.  The "larval" fry tend to carry themselves in a very gentle "S" shape shown very clearly in the image I posted earlier in this topic here:  http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/fb.ashx?m=78797
 
As they begin to settle, they start to hold their tails in a flexed, upright posture that reminds me of a sort of "walk like an Egyptian" hand gesture such as what is shown in this image: 
 

 
You can also see what I am describing in the second image in this post in my Doryrhamphus excisus journal: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/fb.ashx?m=60834
 
You can also see what I am describing on Page 101 of the May/June 2012 Issue of Coral Magazine, in the article, "Successful Breeding of the Yellowbanded Pipefish", in the image with the caption, "Metamorphosing 15-day-old pipefish."  You can find the link to the issue here:  http://bit.ly/VhcIet
 
In these examples, the fish are holding their tails up, with the flag part still held somewhat horizontal.  That's the "Egyptian" posture I'm describing -- it would mimic the upper arms of both arms of the "Egyptian" image, together with the other arm parts of the Egyptian's left arm (to the right in the image).  The onset of this posture in the fry, in my experience, coincides with the beginning of metamorphosis/settlement, a more robust condition, a slower, more methodical approach to hunting, and a transition to larger food items.  These are all good things.
 
EDIT:  By the way, on Page 100 of the May/June 2012 Issue of Coral Magazine the Yellowbanded Pipefish can clearly be seen engaging in the behavior I have previously described as "2 (B)" in my previous post in this topic here:  http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/fb.ashx?m=77996
 
I have determined to my satisfaction that this behavior is courtship behavior in these fish.  It can also be seen in the image on Page 50 of the May/June 2011 issue of Coral by Till Deuss about his work breeding Bluestripe Pipefish that you can see here:  http://bit.ly/V3rjF2
 

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I am down to just one fry left from the December 30th spawn, but that one is looking nice and strong.  I'm going to call that one settled at this point.  She (I'm calling this one "She" because I'm hoping it turns out to be a female, so I can pair her up with one of my "spare" males!) is starting to take on some adult coloration.  I'll try to get a picture soon.  I have added some Tigriopus to her fishbowl, as well as a few Moina, to give her more food variety.  She still usually goes after the Apocyclops, and only the smallest Moina are candidates for her to eat, and even those are probably too big, but I still want her to have options.  Since my Parvocalanus are doing well, I've been adding some of them, too.
 
The male in Tank #2 hatched his eggs over a few days, and it was very frustrating trying to snag them.  Unlike the other male, and unlike the Bluestripe male, he tends to hatch his eggs shortly before dawn.  The few fry that do make it into the snagger have usually been there for a couple of hours by the time I find them, usually because I oversleep, having been up several times during the night looking for fry to hatch.
 
The female in Tank #2 has gotten over whatever it was that was making her look sickly, but that pair has not spawned, and it has been several days since that male hatched his last eggs.
 
Meanwhile, the male in Tank #1 is still holding only one or two eggs from the January 19th spawn.
 
The males in Tank #3 have been fed nothing but frozen foods for over a month now.  I see one of them regularly eating the cyclops out of the water column, but the other one still just picks food off the bottom.  They both look a little thin, but haven't starved, and are out and about regularly in the tank.  The male in Tank #2 also is a very eager eater of frozen cyclops out of the water column.  The other three fish, (Female in Tank #2 and both Male and Female in Tank #1) will take frozen, but grudgingly.   I'm changing my strategy of trying to force them onto frozen for now.  My main concern at this point is to condition them as well as I can.  I've been culturing the Tigriopus, and have also ramped up my Moina production, and have resumed hatching Artemia to enrich, so that I can keep them as well fed and healthy as possible.  I need more fry to work with, darn it!
 

The pair in Tank #1 spawned this morning.  Woot!  Now, I just need to keep the male well-fed enough so that he carries the eggs to hatch, rather than absorbing them for their nutrition.  He's chowing down on 3 day old Artemia enriched for 24 hours with Dan's Feed right now.  I've got plenty of Tigriopus and Moina at the ready for him, too.
 
The lone fry from the December 31 hatch has definitely settled.  I gave her a "lights out" night last night, and when I awoke and turned the lights on, she had been sleeping on the bottom of the fishbowl.  It scared me at first, as I though maybe she had died, but no, she was just doing a benthic sleeping thing.  She is alive and well, and eating nicely tonight.

Congratulation! ... but ... we want photos....

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

 
Ya, ya....  It's just that the truth be told, the "greenwater" in the 2 gallon kreisel is quite a murky green.  Not very photogenic!  I know that I do need to get y'all what I can get you.  Photographic evidence of settlement will come soon.
 
The live feed, so far, is working well on the pair in Tank #1.  After 3 days now, the male doesn't appear to have absorbed any of his eggs.  They have had an average of probably 8 hours or more each day of live food, with constant snicking the whole time during the hours that live food has been available.  I think that their snicking muscles must be getting pretty sore!  I've been keeping up daily production of Artemia, and growing them out at least 12-24 hours, and often longer, all the while enriching with Dan's Feed, sometimes augmenting with liquid Selco.  I've also been having good production of Tigriopus, plus some Moina to feed them.  If I can keep Dad well-fed enough, then I look forward to a nice, big hatch from this spawn, and I've also got the Parvocalanus ramped up nicely, and ready for the expected hatch in about a week now.

It wasn't so much, "I want evidence!" so much as, "I want to see cute pipefish babies!"

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

Here are the cutest pics I could muster tonight:
 

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WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.fishtalpropagations.com/#!home/mainPage
"Making captive breeding easier."

She's gorgeous! Thanks for the photos! I totally see the Bangles reference.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886

very nice.

check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

Thanks, everybody!
 
A totally serendipitous feeding thing happened today.  For the last several days, I've fed the pair in Tank #1 more or less nothing but live foods, mostly enriched BBS, Tigriopus, and some Moina.  Today, I thought, on a hunch, I'd go ahead and feed this tank some of the frozen cyclops in between live food feedings.  The female almost immediately started snicking the frozen cyclops right out of the water column, just like the male in Tank #2 and one of the males in Tank #3!  I don't know if she has gotten used to eating the larger live Tigriopus from the water column, and the dead cyclops remind her of the Tiggers, or if she somehow has grown weary of the relatively small size of the Artemia, and/or the evasive motion of the live feeds, and has decided to go after the larger, easy-to-catch frozen stuff, or what has finally kicked in to make her "get on board", but whatever it is , I'm STOKED!
 
For me, this is great news.  I now have two males and one female that will eat frozen cyclops eagerly (assuming the female keeps this up in the future).  Right now, I don't have any plans on repairing anybody, but if one form or another of breeding disaster were to strike, I'd really like to get a male/female pair of these together that were both eating frozen well, so that I could really fatten them up.
 
The male in Tank #1 has been enjoying the live feeds, and although he has absorbed or otherwise lost one or two of his eggs, at the end of day 5 post spawn, he is still carrying the vast majority of the eggs from this spawn.  I'm still optimistic that I'll get a decent hatch from this spawn.

 
 
How old is this one in the photos?

 
24 days.

I had a very small hatch from the pair in Tank #1 last night.  It was after 9 days this time instead of 10, probably because I've raised the temperature in that tank up to about 78F about a week ago.  The male had once again absorbed most of his eggs by hatch day.  I only got about 7 fairly weak fry from this hatch, and as of this evening only 1 is still alive.
 
I'm calling this a "breeding disaster", in terms of my previous post.  The female in Tank #1 continues to eat frozen well, and is looking very fat, healthy, happy, and gravid.  Consequently, I have moved the male previously in Tank #1 into Tank #3, and moved the male previously in Tank #3 that is eagerly eating frozen food into Tank #1.  Hopefully, they will pair up quickly enough, and this male will be stronger as a result of his better eating habits.  Time will tell.
 

CHAOS!!!  MAYHEM!!!  Boy, was THAT ever a BAD IDEA!!! 
 
As soon as I placed the "Male" from tank #3 into Tank #1 with my "eating female", she started showing major aggression towards "him".  If you review my notes earlier in this journal, the only reason that I am assuming the "males" in Tank #3 are males is because they were showing a great deal of aggression towards each other before I moved them into their own tank, and then this aggression died down, presumably because of the absence of any female to fight over.
 
I am now thinking that it is entirely possible that the two fish I've been keeping in Tank #3 are actually two females.  I have personally witnessed strong aggression between two female Bluestripe pipefish before, back when I had just acquired two male/female pairs.  When there were two pairs, everybody got along just fine in the same tank, but then one of the males died, and the mated female started showing extreme aggression towards the widowed female, who I had to remove for her protection.  Ultimately, with the Bluestripes, the mated female eventually died, too, a few months later, and when I placed the lone male in with the "widowed" female, they immediately bonded, and they are my parent broodstock pair to this day.
 
Another possible theory is that these fish are more loyally monogamous than they are generally considered to be, and the pair in Tank #3 really ARE males, but this female is not ready to accept a new, usurping male supplanting her mate so suddenly and quickly. 
 
Additional information about this includes the fact that the remaining fish in Tank #3 and the male from Tank #1 I put in there last night seem to get along just fine.  In fact, they were doing the bonding "snouts pointing downward" behavior I described as (2)(b) in this post http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/fb.ashx?m=77996 this morning.  Ultimately, I don't really know yet the gender of the two fish I've been keeping in Tank #3, but given the new information, I'm leaning towards thinking they are actually two females.
 
At any rate, the aggression being shown to the new introduction in Tank #1 was so great that I decided to move everybody back to their "home" tank this morning, reversing the change I made last night.
 
The male who belongs in Tank #1 was greeted enthusiastically by his female, and they immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) started an egg transfer (which was due to happen this morning)!
 
Here are some pics:
 
In this one, you can see the female's ovipositor.  She is the fish on top, and the bump on her lower side is usually not there:

 
In this blurry (sorry) image, what looks like eggs on the male (top fish swimming upside down) is really just his flaps opened up, as this was taken at the very beginning of the egg transfer, before they had actually transferred any eggs:

 
And here is a good shot of the actual mating/egg transfer behavior:

 
They actually get quite acrobatic during this process, at times snaking around each other and doing barrel rolls, and at other times making more of an X shape than an = shape.
 
I guess that for this round, at least, I'll just have to continue to do my best to condition this male as well as possible.
 
 

Attached Image(s)

I am certain HD video will be required for the next spawn. The people demand it!