Clown gobies with SPS?
 

I previously had a lil green clown goby that I adored, but I only had two small pieces of SPS, a pavona and a bonsai, and he would perch on them all the time and would irritate them, ie the polyps wouldn't be out and generally appeared annoyed. I have about 10 pieces of SPS now and wondered if anyone else had kept them successfully with SPS without them being too much of a nuisance? I'm just in a 28g nano, so probably wouldn't be the same as a bigger SPS dominated tank, but just curious! Oh and also if anyone noticed a difference between the green clown goby and a yellow clown goby based on how they affected the SPS - Thanks!

I had a yellow clown gobie. Before I purchased it I ask and researched to be told time and time again it was reef safe. It was in my 180 for two weeks and completely destroyed my red planet and a 8" efflo
Just buy chance he took a ride down the overflow
Never again.

Agreed
Wasn't until I all ready had mine that I found out they munched SPS.
I had a 30g bow, with a few lps other softies and what not, and 1 toonie sized frag of some rainbow monti... so nothing special, little **** munched it down to all of 2 polyps.
So despite how cute they are and how interactive the fish was, never again. :neutral:

I got my first clown goby for free from Chin years ago because it was munching on the polyps of his sps and I didn't have sps at the time. So yeah, clown gobies are sps eaters.

Reef safe not so much lol good to know!

I also tried a yellow clown goby with sps....no good. Constantly perched in them and nipped at the polyps. Does make for some neat pictures tho with them sitting in the sps branches. I believe liveaquaria lists them as reef safe but then near the bottom of the write up mentions how they will nip at sps polyps....how is that reef safe I ask? I would say no to anyone looking to keep them with most sps....perhaps a couple sps they may not go after but they seem to like a lot of them lol

I currently have a green clown goby that doesn't bother my space but I had two yellow clowns that ate the polips off my sps.

If you go to google and type in clown goby under images, 90% of the pictures are of them sitting on or in various corals haha. Im not sure how reef safe they are.

http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2012/...ll-herbivores/

A great artical about green clown goby.

I got a citron and he loved a millepora to death, managed to frag a bit, so no sps more until he's gone, but beautiful and sociable fish. Much prettier than some sps anyway. :)

+1 On the above article. It's very much a symbiotic relationship similar to clownfish and anemone.

I don't have issues with my Yellow/Citron goby. However it IS true that of the acros that I do have (I'm mainly an LPS hobbyist); the polyps do NOT extend as much as they should in theory. The goby will swim and "hop" from SPS to SPS. Once it perches on a piece the polyps naturally close up.

I've never observed the goby actually nip or munch on my SPS. Also; take into consideration that my SPS aren't large colonies either. Since Yellow/Citron/Clown (acro gobies in general) have huge acro homes in the wild; we as hobbyists see the 'irritation' of closed polyps in a much smaller environment - it's more pronounced.

They are cute and full of character. Unless you have large SPS colonies; you will notice closed polyps.

I think it's also worth noting that having more than one of these gobies in your system could be an issue for SPS lovers. When and if they mate.....the eggs are known to irritate the corals to which they are attached to.