My yellow watchman sifts sand, but it gets most of its calories from feasting on the mysis, bloodworms & brine I feed the 35g Hex. tank with. It's grown like stink, so it must be getting enough to eat :biggrin: Just have to make sure some food reaches the bottom of the tank since he's not big on swimming up into the water column to compete for his dinner.

JME,

Anthony

Goby's will take anything usually, the problem is getting food down to there level. My mated pair of yellow watchmens alway's use to stay at the bottom until I increased the circulation about a year and a half ago, now the food is constantly moving throughout the reef and they have adapted by coming right in the middle of the water column to feed, they will even surface feed for the first few minutes along with two skunks, a perc and a six line.

Try using more mysis and spirulina as brine is just junk food.

Does your goby have a small blue stripe on his cheek? If he does you have a goldenhead/yellowhead sleeper goby ( valenciennea strigata ). To keep these fish for a good length of time you must have a very established sand bed. This fish can get to 7 inches. Much larger than a standard watchman goby.

As BOB_I said, they sift for worms and other types of food in your sand. They have been known to wipe out a healthy sandbed in smaller tanks then slowly starve to death. They have also been known to topple rock when sifting to much by moving the sandbed.

As previously said, try to get the food down to the goby and hopfully he will be interested. Overall they are a great fish..... if you can get them to eat. Oh ya, I recall hearing that it takes them awhile to start eating when introduced to new tanks as well. Hopfully that is the case.

Good luck and let us know how it is going

Cheers

The golden head sleeper goby in my tank is a virtual pig!! He eats or tries to eat anything that floats by. Favorites include mysis and plankton. In addition, he spends about 3/4 of his day sand sifting and the other 1/4 cleaning out his burrow. Grows like stink and always has a noticable panch. I know mine truely appreciated it when I opened up more sand surface area when I re aquascaped.

Goby
 

My second attempt at keeping a Golden head sleeper Goby ended last week. He or she constantly kept the sand bed clean but withered away slowly. It ate like a pig when I fed flake food, Mysis shrimp, Brine shrimp etc. I believe this species needs regular feedings throughout the day due to its activity level in the aquarium and lack of food in the sand bed over time

As I said before, they don't usually live too long. I have a friend who had a couple in a six foot tank. They grew very rapidly, so they must have had enough food to eat. However, less than a year later they inexplicably died. :sad: