Naked Goby!

[techcyn]

Thanks, Ally, for the wonderful little Naked Goby! He's so cute, a little shy, but comes out when I feed. The only problem is that his mouth is so tiny, and he stays at the bottom, I'm concerned he's not getting enough to eat.

Flakes get snatched by the other fish and the sinking pellets - even the smallest cichlid pellets - are too large. What do you suggest? He goes after anything I send his way, but spits out a lot of things. Funny, he tried to carry off an algae wafer that was almost as big as he is! LOL

Any ideas on what I can do to make sure he's getting enough to eat?
Thanks,
Cyndy

[mistahoo]

There's several things you could try. Live daphnia, live white worms, frozen bloodworms, frozen krill, frozen mysis shrimp, nls .5mm, nls 1mm, etc. I'm not quite sure what naked gobies like to eat, but I would experiment with different foods and see what they can and will eat then sticking with that. I prefer to feed my fish pellets because it's so packed with nutrition.

[black_knight]

Naked gobies will eat all sorts of live foods and frozen (all of the ones mistahoo mentioned). Try cyclopeeze.They are just really skittish, as they tend to be at the bottom of the food chain. They live in costal/transitional waters, and hide in dead oyster shells. They live in cooler waters but when winter comes they tend to stop eating and hide. They really havea very hard time competing for food in community tanks like alot of the smaller timid goby species. You can catch these in Rhode Island.

[techcyn]

Goby

Naked gobies ... You can catch these in Rhode Island.

Thanks for the great information!
Apparently you can catch them here too!
Cyndy

[decal]

Funny, I've never had any trouble getting these guys to eat anything. Frozen, flake, you name it, they chow down practically the moment you take them out of Galveston Bay. Mine particularly liked Zoomed's earthworm flakes. Sounds like yours just have too much competition. Might want to give them some shells to claim as their own, could make them feel more comfortable. I used escargot shells a while back.

The question that still eludes me is how to get them to maintain a dark brown coloration. I rather prefer it over their more typical tan color. I had three a while back. Two were light colored while the other was dark brown. The light ones would occasionally turn brown briefly. They lived on pool filter sand. The brown one has since been moved into a saltwater setup in which he has maintained a light coloration ever since.

[techcyn]

Thanks for the shell idea. I will get him one. This one is light tan.