all fish come from the ocean. they don't really go through any special processing before they make it to the LFS, or our tanks. sure you can put fish directly in your tank, but as stated, what environment have they come from? are you going to mimic it to ensure that it lives?
how about posting a pic of it and we'll try to ID it and figure out what it's used to, where it came from, what it needs to eat, what temps it prefers (is able) to live in, what type of surroundings it requires to survive....
Just remember, you can introduce all sorts of weird parasites and diseases by putting local fish into a tropical tank. also, as randy said, most temperate water fishes don't do very well at normal reef tank temps...
Do you really think we kept hundreds of pipefish? :lol2:
J/k Of course we didn't keep them. They are too difficult to keep alive mainly because of water temp requirements. I believe Paul kept two for his local tank but that was it.
Pipefish are very common...and very hard to keep. You would have to keep them like seahorses, in a dedicated tank stocked with loads of nearly microscopic foods...copepods, etc...I think most amphipods would be too large...and the tank would have to be cool....and well covered- they are jumpers. My one attempt at keeping a pipefish, when I had a small "local" tank, ended within 24 hours when it went skydiving.