Requirements to keep a pair of bluestripe pipefish fat on prepared foods

[Tired]

I'm upgrading to a 45 gallon tank, and I have a long-term goal of keeping a mated pair of bluestripe pipefish. Short-term goals are a pair of clownfish, a couple roughhead blennies (like a barnacle blenny, but doesn't even reach 1.5" long), and a pico goby or two. I'm going to set the tank up to be hospitable to pods- ocean live rock, that Tampa Bay live sand with all the crevices and spaces, a 5gal or so HOB refugium.

From what I've read, bluestripe pipefish are the easiest pipefish to get onto prepared foods, so I'm not too worried about that. I figure Can O Cyclops and some finely chopped mysis should do the trick, maybe mix in some other foods for variety.

My question is, how often would I need to feed this pair of pipefish to have them living entirely off of frozen foods, not off of copepods? I don't want to rely on the copepods to keep them fat, only to serve as extra treats. Is 4x a day enough? Would love to hear from people who've kept them on prepared foods.

 

[blaxsun]

I have not had long-term success with pipefish, as I found I could never get them off copepods - and they're just not assertive enough to compete with other fish like wrasses, mandarins, etc. I tried foods like brine and calanus but didn't have any real success.

 

[Tired]

Bluestripes seem to be an exception to the pipefish rule. They're fairly active swimmers as pipefish go, and I've actually found multiple accounts of them starting to eat non-live food with no training, just from seeing other fish eat. Otherwise, I wouldn't even try.